


A Lesson In Tightropes

by jaerie, themayqueen



Series: Like Ashes [1]
Category: Hanson (Band)
Genre: Coming Out, Depression, Eating Disorders, F/M, Lesbian Character, Marriage, Miscarriage, Religion, Self-Harm, Sexual Content, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-05-12 20:40:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 50,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5680000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaerie/pseuds/jaerie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/themayqueen/pseuds/themayqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zac always said he was the shy one, but no one believed him. When no one sees who you really are, it's all too easy for dangerous secrets to stay hidden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Everybody lies.

That’s no great secret; on some instinctual level, we all know it’s true. Thanks to the career path I was thrust onto, I had to learn that lesson earlier than most.

Some lies they tell to make their own existence easier, I suppose. To offer simple explanations for things that aren’t easy to explain—war, hatred, disease. When people talk about depression, if they’re brave enough to even speak the word, they talk as though only types of it exist in the world.

The first type is the depression of television commercials. Are you feeling a bit blue, they ask? Something got you down lately? Are you just not getting enough sleep?

Yeah, right.

The second type, they romanticize--lives tragically cut short, potential left unrealized, dreams lost. The victims are always young, beautiful people who have it all, if only they could just realize it, but they’re lost to their dark secrets and demons.

Well, maybe they do get a few things right.

 

_Another phone call. It seemed like these days we spent more time in pointless conference calls than we did writing, recording or anything else remotely related to creating music._

_I was getting sick of it. One more phone call and I might kill myself._

_There was a needle and thread on the table from where I’d tried to sew a cool new patch onto my jeans the day before, and I picked it up. I couldn’t handle these calls without something to fidget with, something to occupy my hands. And since it would be rude to grab my guitar and just start strumming while Lyor rambled at us, I settled for stabbing new holes in my pants._

_“Let me tell you what I detected as an issue. Glen, I believe, he feels that you guys are questioning him on almost everything that he’s doing. He feels really positive about you guys but he’s saying he’s a very wealthy person and this is more a labor of love and pleasure.”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“When things become too deep, it becomes too difficult.”_

_Deep. Difficult. I rolled those words over in my brain as I pulled the needle through the army drab material. What did they mean? What was difficult to someone with millions of dollars? We talked about the torture the label was putting us through, but was it really? We still had our careers, I supposed, for whatever that was worth anymore. They hadn’t really taken anything away from us._

_So why did it feel like it? Why did it feel like every day I sunk a little deeper into something I couldn’t say, into this strange numbness that was even worse than feeling?_

_“We’ve felt like we were very much leaves in a river, which is kind of interesting that—“_

_“So then I’m confused.”_

_The needle pricked my thigh and I winced. At least that felt like something. Physical sensation was all I seemed to have left._

_A sudden urge overcame me to press the needle down, right into the fat and muscle, all the way down to the bone if it were long enough. Maybe that would open the floodgates and all the emotions I’d felt strangled by would finally come out. I knew it didn’t work that way, though._

_But what if… what if it did._

_“I think the concept of Glen charging three hundred thousand for four tracks is ridiculous.”_

_The phone made a series of beeps and I realized the call had ended. Had I contributed to it at all? Did it matter?_

_I pulled the needle back. The moment had passed. No blood drawn, no bodily wound to prove the thoughts I’d just entertained. I wasn’t sure if I had passed or failed that test. All I knew for certain was that I would take the same test again, and maybe next time I wouldn’t be such a coward._

 

The truth of it is so much more complicated.

It creeps up on you, slowly then all at once, until you can’t remember ever being any other way. This is just who you are. This is your life, for better or worse—mostly worse. Maybe those around you see it, but they can laugh about it, pointing to silly reasons for what they blow off as typical teenage angst.

And you… you’re strung out on a wire, torn between fear of death and fear of life. But you learn how to survive it. And you learn how to _hide_ it. You walk the walk so well that no one can see through your smile at all.

Like I said, everybody lies.


	2. Chapter 2

The rental house in California was tiny. It was a budget saver, I supposed, because everyone knew we were blowing through the record company money at an incredible rate. At some point, like during our last tour, we would probably have to take over the funding entirely. So Ashley found us a good deal, through a friend of a friend or something, and we ended up in this dinky little place where we had to set up an extra bed in the living room just so I’d have somewhere to sleep that wasn’t a couch.

At least we didn’t have the entire family with us; given that two of us were legal now, we were practically on our own, with Dad checking in occasionally. I think sometimes our parents forgot that I was still a teenager, but I wasn’t going to remind them. The little bit more freedom I’d been afforded this time seemed like a good thing. For the first time in months, I felt like I could breathe, at least until everyone started parading through the room that functioned as living room, my bedroom and sometimes even recording studio.

Even though it was just the three of us and Ashley, it started to feel crowded. There was a constant stream of other people there—record label people when they could be bothered to remember we were in the same state, engineers and other musicians and all the new California friends Taylor had made.

I kept finding excuses to leave the house, not that anyone even asked where I was going. The house was in a residential area not too far from the beach and really close to one of the approximately four billion In-N-Out Burger places on the west coast. I had developed a taste for their burgers on our first trip to California, which felt like decades ago, and it was a running joke now that I hadn’t eaten anything else for a month. Maybe I hadn’t. I couldn’t remember. Had we been here for a month already? It felt like only a few days and at the same time like a few years.

Sometimes I thought I really was cracking up. It was easier to get weed out here, but even when I wasn’t smoking, I was in a haze, my connection to reality growing fainter and fainter by the second.

I tried to remember when I had eaten something other than a double-double. I had a poptart that morning, I thought. Or the morning before. There were late night 7-11 slushies on the way to a recording session, but I couldn’t remember when or where. That might have been a week ago or even two.

Without giving it much thought, I walked off the sidewalk and veered down toward the beach. I slipped off my shoes and let my toes sink into the sand. At least I could still feel that. It was fairly late, and this section of the beach was never crowded. I was all alone. My feet moved of their own accord until I was running, the damp, tightly packed sand propelling me along easily.

I ran until I wasn’t sure where I was anymore, then turned around and ran back. My lungs ached and my legs felt like rubber bands that had been stretched too far. At least I might have worked off the most recent burger, I decided, but I’d been gone so long that Taylor and Isaac were probably sending out the search parties.

They hadn’t even noticed I was gone.

The living room was full of recording and video equipment, with my brothers in the middle of it. From what I could tell, it was the same argument all over again—Isaac on the verge of falling apart and giving up while Taylor tried desperately to hold him together.

They kept talking, even as I walked by, trying carefully not to step on or trip over any important cords. They were talking about getting into the studio and just recording the damn thing already, and I wondered why I wasn’t part of that conversation. Sometimes I was just along for the ride. Whatever they decided, I would go with it. I wouldn’t have a choice.

Someone had left a plate with half a sandwich sitting on the floor, and I nearly put my sandy foot right in it. It wasn’t anything really gross, just bologna on wheat. But something about it made my stomach turn. I thought I’d digested or burned off my earlier meal, but there it was again, threatening to come back up.

I hurried to the bathroom, still totally unnoticed by my brothers, and threw myself onto the floor in front of the toilet. A few weak coughs later and nothing had come up. I was so desperate to rid myself of that feeling that I considered shoving a finger down my throat. That would work, wouldn’t it? That was how bulimics did it, so why couldn’t I?

But I couldn’t. As always, I was too weak.

I stood up and stared at myself in the mirror. There were dark circles under my eyes and my hair lung limply, falling out of its ponytail. It was longer than it had ever been and greasy. When was the last time I’d cut it or even washed it? I had no clue. I was smelly and dirty and I didn’t even have the energy to get into the shower just a few feet away.

I had sweated through my t-shirt, and that surprised me. Had I run that far and that hard? It wasn’t all that warm out. I had no concept of time anymore. All I knew was that I was exhausted, but it wasn’t enough. Whatever I had sweated out, it didn’t solve anything. There was still something so wrong inside of me and I didn’t know how to get rid of it.

The guy standing in front of me was a mess. There was no other way to describe him. He wasn’t a rockstar or a sex symbol. The guys in the living room were, with their guitars and leather jackets. But me, I was just some guy. Some guy I didn’t even recognize anymore.

I fell back to the floor, and this time I wasn’t a coward. It made me cough and gag, and it burned like nothing I’d ever felt. There was a moment when I regretted it, but it was too late. The deed was done. I flushed down the proof and pulled myself, shakily, back to my feet, my hands grasping for purchase along the edge of the sink. I rinsed my mouth out with a small bathroom cup of water, and even that burned my raw throat.

What had I started?

“Hey, Zac?” Came Taylor’s soft voice, his knuckles rapping gently along the door. “You in there?”

I buried my face into a towel and groaned. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be out soon.”

Taylor nudged the door open, his reflection appearing in the mirror next to me. “I didn’t even hear you come in. Umm, but anyway, I was just getting ready to head out with uh, with the guys, and I think Ike’s going to order Chinese or something, if you wanna get your order in.”

“I’m not hungry,” I replied, my stomach turning even though there couldn’t possibly be anything left in it. “I mean, I ate earlier. While I was out.”

Taylor looked me up and down, I was sure he was going to call me out—on what, I wasn’t sure. What could he know or even suspect about what I had done? After a moment, he shrugged. “Alright. Well, I’ll see you later. I think we’re gonna take another pass on Penny and Me tomorrow and polish that demo up as much as possible.”

“Okay. Later.” I put my hand on the bathroom door, as if to close it, hoping he would take the hint and leave me alone.

“Later,” Taylor said softly.

He padded away and I closed the door softly behind him. Slamming it would only draw more attention, and that was the last thing I wanted. Maybe feeling ignored wasn’t such a bad thing. I couldn’t get away with what I’d done if everyone were watching me as closely as it sometimes felt they were.

What had I done…?

I stripped off my sweaty clothes and turned on the shower, feeling a sudden urge to cleanse myself. I couldn’t wash away all my sins, but at least symbolically it might make me feel better to scrub myself clean.

The water was practically scalding, but I didn’t care. I liked the way it felt. Anything that hurt, anything that got under my skin, literally or figuratively, was a good thing. Nothing else seemed to get my attention if it didn’t cause me pain in some way. I stood under the spray and just let it burn, let it wash over me like a million scalding hot needles.

What I had done was bad; I knew that. I wasn’t stupid. You weren’t supposed to make yourself throw up. The pain that it caused was proof enough of how bad it was for you. But the feeling of emptiness that it left wasn’t so bad. It was different from the emptiness I felt the rest of the time. Like the water rushing over me, it made me feel clean. It made me feel okay for once.

I couldn’t make a habit of it. I knew that. With the constant parade of people through the house and all the jokes about my strange and massive appetite, I’d never get away with throwing up everything I ate. Someone would notice. And if I didn’t eat at all, they’d notice even faster.

No, I couldn’t make it a habit. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t do it again.

If I could slip away so easily like I had that day, then my choices weren’t so limited. No one would know if I’d gone for a run along the beach instead of a fast food run. Who would have reason to watch me that closely and question what I said I’d done?

I would have to be careful, yes, but I knew I could get away with a lot.

I shivered even though the water was still scalding. What was I doing? What was I considering doing? It was madness, I knew, but it was something I could feel. Something I could take into my own hands and not feel like I was just going along with the flow or being dragged along kicking and screaming.

It was mine, and mine alone, and for that reason I loved it.


	3. Chapter 3

We went home for the holidays because Mom wouldn’t have it any other way.

Holidays in the Hanson house meant lots and lots of food. Thanksgiving and Christmas were so busy, the house so full of extended family, that I was easily able to get away with my new habit of just not eating at all. As long as there was a plate in my hand at all times, no one seemed to notice that the amount of food on it never changed. I took a few small bites here and there, but I didn’t taste any of it. I might as well have been eating cardboard.  
Once things settled back down, though, I knew I would have to do more than just pretend to eat. That was where my favorite vice came into the picture.

During a rare moment of quiet and privacy, I bundled up in my winter coat and climbed out my bedroom window onto the pseudo-balcony formed by the roof below. It was a little too chilly out to be comfortable, but the pipe in my hand would warm me up soon enough. Since we had driven back from California, I managed to smuggle home some really good weed from one of the guys who had played bass on one of our demos.

It took just a few hits to level me back out and put a smile on my face. For the last month, the only time I really seemed to be hungry was after I’d smoked some. That was a bad sign, I was sure, but I didn’t really care. As long as I did eventually eat, even if it only happened in the form of late night munchies, I figured I wasn’t _too_ unhealthy.

Once I was swaying a little too much to safely stay on the roof, I climbed back into my room. I kept my coat on for a few minutes while I warmed back up, laying back on my bed and staring up at the ceiling.

I barely heard the soft knock on the door, followed by the creak of it opening. I turned my head slowly and blinked at the figure that appeared in front of my eyes. It was Kate. That didn’t make sense. She should have been in Georgia. But even though I was stoned, I was sure I wasn’t imagining her standing there.

We had only been dating for a few months, but I liked her a lot. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to say I loved her, but I knew someday soon she would want to hear those words. She wouldn’t ask for them, though; she would wait for me to be ready. I really liked that about her.

Everyone liked to joke about how she had dated Isaac first, and I knew some people looked down on her for it. But it wasn’t like that. When Taylor and Natalie started dating, our parents were a little dubious; they didn’t say it, but I thought it was because she was a fan. They felt better about it if Isaac chaperoned, and he took the opportunity to ask Kate to tag along as his date. When he finally talked her into a solo date, he made the wrong move of buying a guitar and naming it after her. Kate had been surprisingly unimpressed by the romantic gesture and dumped him.

But she was attached at the hip to Taylor’s girlfriend, Natalie. When he left his laptop open after an instant message conversation with her, I couldn’t resist sending silly messages, pretending to be him. One time, Kate was at Natalie’s house and she happened to reply. After that, the two of us talked more and more, although neither of us said the words boyfriend or girlfriend. It didn’t really become official until the summer, when Natalie’s planned visit turned into a big camping trip for all of us. We didn’t tell anyone we were together until Halloween, when she and I had dressed as Princess Buttercup and Westley. Few things said “we’re a couple” like a matching Halloween costume, and although I probably should have thought it was cheesy, I didn’t. It was cute and quirky, just like Kate.

“You smell like smoke,” Kate said, sitting down on the bed next to me. “Is that why it’s so cold in here? Were you out on the roof again?”

I nodded. I hadn’t been able to lie to her, at least about the pot. She didn’t lecture me about it, although I could see judgment in her eyes every time the topic came up. After a moment, I found my voice and asked, “What are you doing here?”

“It was a surprise,” she replied. “Nat’s downstairs with Taylor. Your parents thought it would be nice if we came to the New Year’s Eve party you guys are planning, so they flew us out here.”

With some effort, I pulled myself up to a seated position next to Kate and put my hand over hers. I knew I should have said something sweet about how nice it was to see her or whatever, but I couldn’t find the words and my mouth was too dry to speak anyway.

“Are you guys happy to be back home?” She asked, twining her fingers with mine.

“Yeah,” I croaked out. “I think we needed a break from everything out there.”

Kate nodded knowingly. I didn’t tell her everything about the recording process, but there were times when I couldn’t stop myself from venting. I hated putting that burden on her shoulders; it should have been just ours to deal with. But I supposed that was part of the point of relationships--to share your problems.

“Do you wanna take a nap?” She asked. “You just look really tired, that’s all. I think your mom was going to heat up some Christmas leftovers, but I’m sure she won’t mind if I fix you a plate and bring it up here when you’re ready.”

A part of me wanted to just go downstairs; maybe with enough people around, I would be able to push the food around my plate without being noticed. But if it were just Kate and I up here, I’d have nowhere to hide. At the same time… I _was_ sleepy. When was the last time I had slept more than a few hours without tossing and turning? I couldn’t remember. Before California, I was sure.

“Yeah, I think I’ll lay down,” I said, knowing Kate would just hound me about it if I didn’t at least try to sleep.

She gave me a small smile and kissed my cheek. “Alright, I’ll be back soon. And I’m… I’m really glad I got to come out here. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” I said softly, but she was already out the door by the time I got the words out.

Once Kate was gone, I pulled myself off my bed and shuffled to the window. I didn’t feel like going all the way outside, but I couldn’t risk the smell of pot smoke in the house, so I just leaned my head out and lit the pipe. If I was going to be forced to eat, I would need an appetite. A few more hits before the pipe wash cashed, and I felt better. I could handle being around Kate and trying to be a good boyfriend better if I were stoned, too. It wasn’t that I didn’t _want_ to be with her, because I did, but I was never sure how to act. Just a few hits, though, and I felt like a human being again.

I stuffed the now cashed pipe into the top drawer of my dresser and collapsed onto my bed again, only barely remembering to close the window first and take off my coat. My eyes fell closed as soon as my head hit the pillow, but I didn’t sleep. At least, I couldn’t really describe those strange dreams as sleeping. They weren’t restful at all, so what was the point?

It wasn’t long, or at least it didn’t feel like very long, before Kate returned. A soft knock at the door announced her presence and roused me from some dream about a faceless monster chasing me through the woods behind our old house. With a sheepish grin, she handed me a plate piled high with all the traditional Hanson family Christmas goodies and a glass of Dr. Pepper.

“Thanks,” I said, sitting up and patting the bed next to me.

Kate sat down delicately and kicked her boots off into the floor before crossing her legs. “I think everyone else is going out to some pool hall or something, but I told them we’d rather stay here. I hope that’s okay.”

“That’s great,” I said, picking up my fork and looking down at all the goodies she’d brought me.

I hadn’t thought I was very hungry, but that changed when I saw the food in front of me. I supposed I had the weed to thank for that, too. My mouth actually watered as I spooned up a heaping helping of sweet potato casserole. Kate knew exactly which foods I would want, and it almost made me feel guilty that she knew me so well when I wasn’t sure what foods she liked at all, aside from Rocky Road ice cream. We had shared a massive cone of it at the lake that summer, and I think that was the moment my feelings changed. But if you asked me anything else about her likes or dislikes, I was afraid I would come up blank. Of course she knew me well; she was a fan first, after all. But it still made me feel guilty. Not guilty enough to stop eating, though.

“Slow down,” Kate said, giggling softly. “You’re going to make yourself sick. And here I was worried because you look like you’ve lost weight. You’re obviously fine.”

“Obviously,” I mumbled sheepishly, pushing the plate away with a bit of pumpkin pie still clinging to the fork. “I guess I didn’t eat much this morning.”

Kate gave a soft sigh. “I just worry about you. I know I sound like your Mom or something, which is so not cool, but I do. With everything going on with the label, I just… I just worry. I know you’re all so stressed out, and when you’re stressed out, you’re not going to take care of yourselves. And you’re teenage boys; you don’t know _how_ to take care of yourself.”

“You do sound like my mom,” I replied, scrunching up my nose and making a face I hoped would make Kate laugh.

It did. She smiled and put her hand on my thigh. “Well, it’s true. I just worry, and you can’t stop me.”

“I’m glad you do,” I replied honestly, brushing a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. Without thinking about what I was about to say, I added, “I love you.”

Kate’s eyes widened, and for a moment, I thought I’d made a big mistake. She blushed and glanced down, and I held my breath. Finally, she glanced back up and gave me a big smile. “I love you, too, Zac. I really do.”

I leaned forward and kissed her softly. I knew that those three words didn’t really change anything, about our relationship or about anything else in my life, but it felt good to say them. It felt good to have one thing that was going right when everything else seemed to be spiraling further and further out of control. I hoped Kate knew how much she really did mean to me. If she didn’t, and if she didn’t feel the same way, I didn’t know what I would do. I needed her to anchor me, I realized. Without her… I didn’t know what would happen.


	4. Chapter 4

I needed a haircut.

Everyone had told me that for weeks, even months, but usually in a joking manner. Now that Taylor’s wedding was drawing nearer, Mom was just this side of nagging me about it, asking if I thought I’d better not wear it back in a ponytail if I wasn’t going to cut it, if I wouldn’t like to make an appointment for a trim, and so on.

Somewhere along the way, it got under my skin and became yet another thing I hated about myself. And so it had to go. I scheduled myself in for a haircut right after Taylor, with no plan except that I knew I couldn’t go on another minute with all of that hair weighing me down.

It had become something to hide behind, I realized, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do without that, but I had to try. Maybe if I got rid of that, I wouldn’t have anything to hide or anything to hide from. It couldn’t hurt, at least.

Or could it?

I watched my hair fall to the floor as Taylor’s hairdresser tried to make small talk with me and I wanted to scream. I couldn’t take it back now. I couldn’t change my mind without walking out of there an even bigger monstrosity than when I had walked in. I looked over at the next station, at the gleaming pairs of scissors lined up neatly, and I had to dig my fingernails into the arm of the chair to keep from jumping up and grabbing a pair.

The urges were getting stronger and stronger, but I never acted upon them. Every time it was something gory and destructive. Last week it was a massive kitchen knife. I’d pictured myself pulling it from its holder and chopping off my left hand. I could practically see the blood and feel the searing pain. Only the thought that it would ruin everything we’d worked for—were still working for, however unsuccessfully—stopped me.

Now, all I could picture was a pair of those sharp barber’s scissors sticking through my skull.

“All done,” Trisha announced in a voice that felt way too chipper for the situation, but of course she couldn’t know what was going on inside my head. If it were up to me, no one at all would ever know.

She spun my chair around so I could see myself in the mirror, but the guy staring back at me didn’t look like me at all. Maybe that was a good thing. I lifted a hand and ran it through my now-short hair. Well, shorter. It was still shaggy and messy, so in a way, I didn’t really look all that different. But it hadn’t been even this short since I was nine years old. Since before… everything.

“It’s good,” I said, glancing up at Trisha and giving her the most genuine smile I’d smiled in months. “I like it. Thanks.”

I couldn’t erase everything, especially not just by cutting off a few inches of hair, but maybe this really would help. I already felt lighter—both physically and mentally. Maybe this would get me closer to who I used to be, before the world knew me and everything became so complicated.

****

I commandeered Taylor’s laptop that evening, because his was the only one our webcam worked with, and crossed my fingers that Kate would be online. I knew she and Natalie were going shopping for bridesmaids dresses that day, and I hadn’t told her about my plan. I turned the webcam on and waited anxiously until finally her username popped up on my screen.

I could see that she was typing, but no words appeared on my screen. Instead, the phone rang, and sure enough, the caller ID revealed a Georgia number.

“Hello?”

“You look so much younger.”

I laughed. “Is that good or bad? And why didn’t you just say that online?”

“I don’t know, I guess I just needed to hear your voice,” she replied. “And yes, it’s a good thing. You don’t look like the weight of the world—literally—is on your shoulders anymore.”

“I thought you liked my long hair.”

“I do,” Kate said. “But you shouldn’t do stuff just because I like it. And that goes for what anyone likes—just do what you like, Zac. What makes you happy.”

“I know,” I replied, even though I wasn’t sure at all what made me happy anymore. I shifted around in my seat, then asked, “Did you guys have fun today?”

“Mhm,” Kate said. “Natalie already had her heart set on these red satin dresses, so we just had to figure out what size everyone needed. We picked out our prom dresses, too.”

Kate and I weren’t going to the prom together. I wouldn’t admit it to her, but I was kind of relieved that she had made a pact with one of her guy friends before she and I even started dating. Even now that we were together, she’d decided to honor that. It was decent of her to do, and it got me off the hook, too. Taylor was going with Natalie, though, which surprised me. It was a big deal, especially since they were still trying to keep their engagement and the circumstances surrounding it a secret.

I still didn’t really understand how any of the last few months were real or how any of it had happened. Kate was no help, either; we were both under the impression that Taylor and Natalie’s relationship was on its last legs. We had agreed not to intervene because it really wasn’t any of our business anyway. Then one night at dinner, Taylor stood up and announced that he had gotten Natalie pregnant.

All I remember after that is a lot of yelling. Everyone was yelling—Mom, Dad, Taylor, Isaac, our managers and the label execs. It seemed like no one stopped screaming for a week. Then it all settled down to a strange, unsettling silence, except for Mom’s constant phone calls to Georgia to plan a wedding long distance.

A wedding. My brother was getting married. My brother was having a child. Taylor was going to be responsible for another human being’s life, and I could barely hold myself together for the length of time it took to get my hair cut.

“Zac? You still there?” Kate asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” I replied. “I was just thinking… about everything. I’m glad you like my hair, though.”

“I really do,” she said. “I was just saying I was glad Nat was in a good mood today. It’s been pretty crazy here. I didn’t know pregnancy mood swings would start so early. But maybe it’s just Nat.”

“Taylor barely leaves the studio these days,” I admitted. “Which is good, in a way, I guess. Means we might get the album done sometime this century. But I worry about him, you know? I’ve never really seen him like this. This is more than his usual focus and drive.”

“Do you feel like sometimes they act like this was all some big, freak accident and wasn’t their fault at all?” Kate asked softly, and I could tell just from her tone of voice that she was ashamed of herself for asking the question.

“Yeah,” I replied just as softly. “I mean, that could… that could be us, you know?”

“We were careful, though.”

Neither of us would say the word, for fear that one of the billion people living in my house had picked up the phone. But it was true; it could have been us if we hadn’t been careful. When Kate was here for New Year’s Eve, after I had said those three little words and Isaac had generously spiked our drinks at the party, well… things happened.

We sneaked out to my van in the driveway, since I shared my bedroom with Taylor and the girls were all camped out in the living room. It wasn’t romantic at all, losing our virginity in the back of a van as old as I was, but it was the only place where we knew we would have a little privacy. I was so nervous I could barely put on the condom I had stolen from the box Taylor kept in his underwear drawer, and the whole thing was over in about ten minutes. Still, it was the best ten minutes of my life, and I was fairly confident Kate felt the same way, even if I didn’t have the nerve to ask her.

We had talked about doing it again, but once Taylor made his big announcement, I think it scared us straight. In any case, our relationship seemed to mostly take place over the phone and online these days. There wasn’t much we could do that way, and I think that was a little bit of a relief. I loved Kate, sure, but I wasn’t ready for what Taylor was going through.

A knock at the door interrupted me from my thoughts. A moment later, Mom poked her head through the door. “Zac, sweetheart? Are you coming down for dinner?”

“Not tonight,” I replied, placing my hand over the receiver. “I ate after I got my hair cut.”

“Okay,” she said. “It looks nice, by the way. You’re going to look very handsome in your tux.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Once she was gone, I took my hand off the phone and said, “Sorry, that was my mom. I guess it’s dinner time.”

“I’ll let you go, then,” Kate said. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I put the phone back on its cradle and turned back to Taylor’s laptop. I snapped a few goofy pics with the webcam and emailed them to Kate, figuring she would get a laugh out of them. I really did look different, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

Once I was just starting to get bored with the Internet, I heard a knock at the door again. Mom appeared again, this time holding a plate in her hands. With a soft smile, she said, “I know you said you weren’t hungry, but it’s your favorite--lasagna. I just wanted to make sure you got a serving before it was all gone.”

“Thanks,” I choked out, my stomach turning just at the thought of food.

Mom sat the plate down on the desk, gave me a soft kiss on the forehead and walked out of the room. It made me feel even worse that she was so sweet and oblivious, but I suppose that was how most mothers were when it came to their teenage sons. You would think, after one teenage pregnancy, she would become a little more suspicious, but I was grateful that she wasn’t.

The truth was, I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning. I did stop at Taco Bueno on the drive home with Taylor, but I left my food in the bag while he gorged himself on both of our servings of nachos. He was so lost in his own world lately that he didn’t even notice; I had counted on that, and he didn’t disappoint.

I picked up the fork and stabbed the slice of lasagna. I had run out of weed a few days earlier, so my appetite was non-existent. I could force myself to eat it, but if I did, I was stuck with it. Sticking my fingers down my throat again wasn’t an option; I wasn’t some crazy bulimic or anything. That had been a one time thing.

Finally, I took one, small, tentative bite, chewing slowly before forcing myself to swallow.

When it didn’t immediately threaten to come back up, I took another bite. Then another. By the time I had forced it all down, the lasagna had gone cold and was completely disgusting. But I did it. I had eaten an entire plate of food for the first time in probably weeks.

Maybe this haircut really was a good thing for me. Maybe it was a turning point, and things really would be different from now on.


	5. Chapter 5

I carried the engagement ring around with me for six months, the box in my pocket or tucked safely into my luggage. The only time I didn’t have it on my person was during our overseas tour. Then, it was safe at home, tucked into a drawer full of my old t-shirts.

Kate had come to visit me during her Christmas break from college, and we indulged one of our favorite pastimes. It was especially fun in New York, we discovered, where the store clerks seemed to think they could smell money a mile away and would fall over themselves to help you if you gave off that telltale stench. On one particular occasion, we had affected horribly exaggerated Southern accents and convinced Claire at Tiffany’s that I was the heir to a peanut farm dynasty and Kate was my debutante bride-to-be.

What Kate didn’t know was how closely I watched her reactions to the various rings Claire showed us and how I made a mental note of which was clearly her favorite. A week later, after Kate had gone back to her classes, I introduced myself to Claire for real and bought the princess cut ring of my girlfriend’s dreams.

It was easy to blame our tour schedule for my delay in proposing; during the year that Underneath was released, I barely got to see Kate at all. At least when we had been recording, there were opportunities for one or the other of us to fly out for a quick visit. Now that I was on the road again and she was halfway through college, our time together was much more limited.

I knew that was just an excuse, though. The truth was that I was scared shitless. After all, I was no older than Taylor had been when our family had all but forced him into marriage, and here I was willingly choosing it. Was I insane? Would Kate think I was insane? Would she turn me down?

Because I was a dumbass, I had no clue how to actually go about proposing to her. As well as I I’d liked to think I knew her, I didn’t know what sort of proposal she would want. My sneaking suspicion, though, was that low key was the way to go, even if it made me feel like an unromantic jackass. During our tour stop in Atlanta, we only had one day together before the band was off to another concert, so I asked Kate how she wanted to spend the day. At first she said she just wanted to watch movies in my hotel room, but I whined and prodded until she asked to go to the World of Coca-Cola. It wasn’t romantic, but I hadn’t been there since our first tour, so I agreed.

There was a Johnny Rockets down the street, and that seemed like a good enough place for lunch. Maybe I wouldn’t propose that day, I decided. It didn’t feel right. Then again, it didn’t feel wrong, either. I reasoned if I was considering it at all, I might as well just go for it. But in between hearing about Kate’s classes and telling her about our Japan tour, I couldn’t find quite the right moment to pop the question.

“Somebody’s got an appetite today,” Kate remarked.

I shrugged sheepishly and sat down the fry I had been about to pop into my mouth. I had already cleaned the plate of my burger, and was starting to wish I’d ordered extra fries.

“You don’t have to stop,” Kate said. “I’m glad. You never eat enough on tour.”

That was true enough, I supposed. Our insane tour schedule left little time for food, and what time we did have to eat was usually spent shoveling in the greasiest, highest calorie meal we could possibly find. It wasn’t healthy at all, but it was just how things went on the road. At least I knew Kate wasn’t judging me for overindulging myself. She rarely judged me for anything, even some of the things that really deserved judgment.

With a grin, I popped the entire French fry into my mouth at once. Sure, I was being a little bit of a pig, but it was better than the alternative. I hated those periods of my life when food seemed to be such an enemy to me. I liked food, and I liked being able to eat it without every bite being a struggle. Ever since we went out on our own and things were looking up, my world seemed to stop spiraling out of control. Sure, I had put on a few pounds, but maybe that wasn’t the end of the world.

As I ate, my attention drifted around the restaurant. It wasn’t terribly crowded. A few girls a couple of booths away caught my eye. There wasn’t anything remarkable about them, really, but they set off what I called my fanson sense. We all had it, to some degree, but I was the best at spotting our fans from a distance. I wasn’t sure it was a talent to be proud of, but it had come in handy on several occasions.

“She looks so skinny lately,” the blonde one said. “No wonder she’s just eating a salad. It’s probably all she eats. And then pukes it up anyway.”

“Well, he’s certainly been eating more than just salads,” her brunette friend remarked.

I glanced back at Kate. She didn’t say anything but the way she pursed her lips told me that she’d heard what those girls had said. I balled my fist and slammed it against the seat. With my other hand, I motioned for our waiter to bring the check. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to get outside, away from those fans. I knew it was bad of me; no matter how they acted, they were at least a little bit responsible for the lifestyle I led. I should be grateful for them. But when they acted like that… it was hard to feel anything but contempt.

Who were they to judge our appearances, anyway? What did it matter? Logically, I knew that they only judged Kate because she was with me. They would find any sort of possible fault with whoever I chose to date. But me… what did my looks matter? Did it have any bearing on my ability to make the music girls like that apparently loved? The answer, of course, was no. But it did matter. It mattered to them, and no matter how much I pretended it didn’t, it mattered to me.

Once the check had been paid and we were safely out on the street, walking toward the aquarium, I took Kate’s hand in mine.

“Sorry about those girls,” I said.

“No, I’m sorry,” Kate replied. “You shouldn’t have to put up with that stuff. Not from girls who claim to be your fans. Makes me ashamed I used to be one of them. Not that I was ever like _them_ , but you know what I mean.”

“I do,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze. “But it’s not your fault they’re like that. And I should be used to it, but you… you didn’t sign up for that kind of attention.”

“But I did, kind of. I knew what to expect when we got together; I wasn’t dumb. I heard the things girls said about you then, and saw all the gossip about girls they thought you were dating. I made my peace with all of that years ago. I know it’s just jealousy. It doesn’t make it feel any better, but I know that’s all it is.”

“As bad as they are now, they’ll be even worse when we get married.”

Kate stopped walking. “ _When_ we get married?”

“I mean… I mean _if_ ,” I stuttered out. This was not going how I had planned at all. Not that I really had a plan in the first place.

“Do you?” Kate asked, her lips curling up into a smirk. “Are you trying to ask me to marry you, Zachary?” 

I felt my cheeks heating up and I ran a hand through my hair. “Well, that was the plan, but somehow I seem to have fucked it up.”

Kate just giggled. “Tell me you at least have a ring. Then we can say you did a better job of it than Taylor, at least.”

“I do,” I said, fumbling in my pocket for the little velvet box. I began to hand it to her, then groaned at my stupidity and fell to my knee on the sidewalk. A grungy Atlanta sidewalk was not at all where I had planned for this to happen, but here we were. There was no going back now, I realized.

Kate just smiled down at me, and I wanted to get right back up and kiss her for being the most patient, understanding girlfriend in the world.

“Kate… Katie,” I stuttered out. “I’m not saying we have to rush into it, run out and get married right away, because I know we’re still young, but… god, sometimes I feel a million years old. But when I’m with you, I don’t. When I’m with you, everything’s better. And I want that feeling for the rest of my life. So, yeah, I am asking you to marry me.”

“And I’m saying yes,” she replied softly.

My hands were shaking so hard that it took me a few tries to put the ring on Kate’s finger, but I was pleased to find that I had at least managed to buy the right size. It was a perfect fit, in every way. If I had had any doubt that I was making the right choice, it was gone in an instant. With Kate, everything was alright. I was alright. I pulled myself to my feet, and without even considering that we were still in public, cupped Kate’s face in my hands and kissed her.

A part of me hoped those bitchy fans had witnessed this entire exchange. I knew that was a horrible thought, but I was tired of being a commodity. I was tired of being their sex symbol, the object of their desire. I wasn’t theirs, at least not in that way. The part of me they got was so small compared to the part of me I gave to Kate. That wasn’t meant to discount how much it meant to them; it was just a fact. They took and took and took so much more than I wanted to give them. Sometimes I wasn’t sure there was enough of me left for anyone else… such as the girl I could now call my fiancée.


	6. Chapter 6

_You live the way you must  
But it's twenty-one or bust  
You only get one chance at bat  
Even great men crash  
But they take the unworn path  
Never speaking of their loss_

_Don't ask for much  
‘Cause you won't live forever  
And this won't last very long  
You won't live forever_

_For all your time and trouble  
You won't amount to much  
You're going end up bones and dust_

I finished a bit sheepishly and let my hair fall over my eyes. I really hadn’t intended for those words, scribbled in a notebook late at night over the sounds of Kate being sick in the bathroom, to be a song. It was just a poem, just a thought. But it stuck in my head and matched itself up to a melody I’d been humming, and before I knew it, I was presenting a new song to my brothers. After we had gone through it a few times for them to learn the words, I mumbled an apology for how much the song and my guitar playing both sucked.

“It’s good, though. Sing it.” Taylor was ever the encouraging presence, indulging just about any idea either of us brought to the table.

“I think what I normally sing is early on the first one and late on the second one,” I mumbled.

“If you realize it, that’s the tagline for the chorus, not its own section,” Isaac remarked.

“The problem is the chorus cannot be the chorus plus that section,” I replied.

“It’s like, it goes out somewhere else for a second, but it’s not a verse,” Taylor said, and I could feel an argument coming on that I wanted no part of. Of course they’d find a way to tear apart this thing I hadn’t even wanted to share in the first place.

While they talked, I picked at a spot on my thumb. I’d managed to slice it with a letter opener a week or so ago, and the injury wasn’t healing well thanks to my tendency to pick at it. There was just something oddly fascinating about it. I couldn’t say what. I wasn’t clumsy like Taylor, so I didn’t go around constantly injuring myself, and I rarely sunk low enough to injure myself on purpose. I could honestly say that had only happened once or twice in my life. The letter opener had truly been an accident, but I couldn’t really deny how fascinated I’d been to watch the blood flow.

“Unless you figure out a verse-ish section, that tells a real, proper story, you end up with a chorus and two b sections.” Isaac replied.

“There’s gonna be a story. It’s just not gonna be in the frame of a verse,” Taylor, attempting to play the diplomat, replied.

“It loses what you like about it when you turn it into—” I tried to cut in, but I should have known better. I could see the frustration growing in Isaac’s expression and I let myself stop before he could actually interrupt.

“I don’t disagree,” he said, “but you’re gonna have to come up with something else. Right now it’s just a loop and a chorus.

“The thing that’s hard about it, Zac—” Taylor began, and I could have sworn he was using his dad voice on me.  
I didn’t want to hear it. I began to strum again, trying to drown him out. It almost worked.

Isaac was louder, though. “My biggest concern with the song is that the ‘you won’t last forever,’ the chorus quote-un-quote, it’s not enough on its own. I’ve always felt like it’s too short, it needs a refrain or something like that. “

I just kept on strumming. I hadn’t even liked the song at first, but now I was determined to get my own way. Eventually, my brothers took the hint and joined in, adding their voices and instruments to mine until it started to sound like a real song.

“You won’t live forever… and life won’t last very long.” Ike sang out as the song ended, his voice louder than mine so I would hear the lyrical change.

I shook my head. “Well, _this_ is talking about your current situation, great or bad, wonderful or terrible, it just won’t last very long, you’re not gonna be there—“

“Or life won’t last very long. This experience, this entire everything.” Taylor mumbled, then wandered out of the room, toward the kitchen.

We had made a point of leaving our cell phones in the other room so that we wouldn’t have any distractions while we worked, but we couldn’t turn the ringers off in case our wives needed to contact us. With two of them pregnant and the other at home with two small kids and a newborn, there was always some reason for one of them to call. It usually wasn’t a big deal, but we tried to answer as soon as we could; generally they understood if we were too busy recording, but we didn’t want to risk sleeping on the couch.

“Looks like Zac’s the culprit this time,” Taylor said as he walked back into the room.

He tossed my phone gently into my lap and I could see that he was right. The screen was lit up with missed call after missed call, all of them from Kate.

“Someone’s in trouble,” Isaac remarked, but his tone felt too casual for the situation. 

“I don’t know, but she’s called like five times in the last ten minutes,” I said, looking down at my phone. I had a bad feeling, one I couldn’t explain to my brothers at all. “Just let me take this and I’ll be right back.”

Before either of my brothers could object to that, I rushed out of the studio, dialed Kate back and put my phone to my ear.

“Zac?” She answered, and my stomach sank. I could practically hear the tears in her voice.

“What’s wrong, babe?” I dreaded the answer.

“I think… I think I miscarried.”

“What?” I gasped out, grabbing onto a column to support myself. “Are you sure? I mean, why do you think…?”

“Zac, there was… so much blood. I hadn’t felt good all day, but I thought it was just normal morning stuff starting, you know? But then, the cramps and… and that. I called the doctor and he says he can get me in this afternoon to make sure. As long as I’m not still in pain or anything, I probably don’t need to go to the hospital--they can take care of things in his office. I could drive myself, but I just really needed to hear your voice, and maybe you could come with me.”

“Of course I’ll come with you,” I said quickly. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. And you, don’t move an inch until I get there.”

“I won’t,” she replied weakly.

I stumbled back into the studio, and I honestly don’t remember what I said to my brothers. All I remember is the mixture of fear and pity in their eyes as they told me it was fine if I took the rest of the day off. As if there was a question. I would have quit the band on the spot if they hadn’t let me be with my wife when our baby had just died.

The drive home was a blur, too. If Kate thought she was in no condition to drive, I was sure I wasn’t either. I was a dangerous driver at the best of times. That day, I barely even noticed the other cars on the road at all. Then, on an empty bridge just on the outskirts of Tulsa, it happened.

_Just one small swerve. End it all. Splash._

When I was a teenager, I considered it a sort of game. I’d imagine veering into oncoming traffic or taking a curve just a little too fast. All the ways I could so easily end it all in a fiery crash. I could see it so clearly, almost feel it, but I could never do it, and I convinced myself it was just an idle game to pass the time while I drove.

Right then, it didn’t feel like a game.

It would take only the slightest turn of the wheel to put my car into a spin; the road was still wet from a summer storm that morning. At the speed I was going, that would be enough. I wouldn’t recover from it and I’d fly off the bridge at such a speed that I would never stand a chance of getting free before the car filled with water.

But as always, I couldn’t do it. Normally I would call it cowardice, but right then I knew it was because my wife needed me. No matter how much it hurt to think that we had lost our baby, I knew I couldn’t cause her more pain. Some days I was sure she was the only thing that kept me from falling completely apart. And this time, I had to hold myself together for her.

That thought gave me the determination I needed to drive the rest of the way home. I made my way into the apartment in a haze, not even aware that I had stepped out of my car or pulled the key from the ignition. Nothing registered at all until the apartment door swung open and revealed Kate in her pajamas, looking smaller and weaker than I had ever seen her look before.

“Oh, baby,” I said, holding my arms out to her.

She collapsed into my arms and I swore I could feel every bone in her body. She hadn’t begun to show yet; she wasn’t even three months along. I knew it wasn’t possible at all, but I could have sworn she had lost twenty pounds she didn’t have to spare just in that one day.

“Let’s get you to the car,” I said softly, running my fingers through her hair. “Is there anything else you need before we go? Anything I can get you?” 

Kate just shook her head. I wondered if she could say a word at all. Maybe she would just never speak again. I didn’t know.

She leaned against me as we walked through the parking garage. How either one of us had the strength to keep going, I don’t know. Once we were in the car, Kate was still as a statue and silent as one, too. I jumped when she reached for the radio and turned the volume all the way down.

“Katie?” I said, not sure what I was even asking.

“I just want the silence right now,” she croaked out. “If that’s okay. Just… silence.”

I nodded. Anything she wanted, I would give it to her, but especially right then. I navigated onto the highway in silence, barely daring to glance across the car at Kate. Without even looking at her, I could tell that she was crying. When I realized that, my own tears began to fall, threatening to obscure my vision. I brushed them away the best that I could, not even trying to hide them. I didn’t remember the last time I’d actually cried. Emotions, for me, tended to manifest in different ways, usually self-destructive ones.

I wasn’t naïve enough to think this meant things would be different this time, though. In fact, I had a feeling I had just turned a horrible corner. What pain had I really known before this? I couldn’t remember. It all paled in comparison. This was a deep, dark hopeless pit unlike any I’d ever fallen into before, and I wasn’t sure if I could find my way out again. All I could do was cling to Kate, figuratively and literally, and hope that together we would, somehow, be okay.


	7. Chapter 7

I stared into my iced tea and watched the ice cubes move back and forth, clinking against each other. The sound of it was almost like music, but so faint that I had to strain to hear it, like when you catch just the faintest hint of a great song from some distant radio. There was a conversation going on around me, but I couldn’t follow it. I imagined that was probably because I hadn’t eaten anything that day, but there wasn’t a lot I could do about that.

“Aren’t you ordering anything, man?” One of the guys in the band we’d just met the night before asked. I could remember neither the band’s name nor his name. We were in Austin for South By Southwest, which was something of an annual tradition for us. We owed so much to that festival, practically our whole career, so at least one of us always went each year. It was like a pilgrimage of sorts, a near-religious experience, paying homage to the rock gods.

“He’s fasting for two,” Taylor replied. When the guy stared at him quizzically, Taylor added, “His wife’s pregnant, so Lent is all on him this year.”

The guy nodded, but still seemed perplexed. I supposed it was odd; although most of the family had started attending church more regularly since we had already settled down and gotten married, Isaac and Taylor weren’t nearly as devout as Kate and I had become. When it came to certain aspects of the Orthodox faith, I was always the odd man out even within my own family. It wasn’t like I was fasting entirely, though, but since my brothers hadn’t bothered to choose a vegan restaurant, I was shit out of luck for this particular meal.

When we lost the baby, it seemed natural to seek comfort in religion. My family had all discovered the Orthodox church earlier that year, but Kate took to it faster and harder than anyone else. It was quieter and based more on rules and regulations than the fire and brimstone she’d been raised on. It gave her a sort of comfort that I knew I couldn’t, and for that, I embraced it, too. If it could save her, maybe it could save me.

It hadn’t yet.

It did, however, give me an excuse to just not eat without people looking at me like I was crazy. I had noticed something funny over the last few years. If you’re relatively happy with yourself, unconcerned about a few extra pounds around the middle, people will take any opportunity to put you down, even if they think it’s just a joke. But when you try to eat healthier, maybe exercise a little, suddenly you’re crazy and don’t need to lose any weight at all.

You just can’t win. _I_ just can’t win.

But at least right now, on a fast day, all I need to do is mention Lent and no one bats an eye when I skip a meal or nibble on a few dry vegetables and little else.

“Yo, Zac,” a voice said, and it took me a moment to recognize that it belonged to my brother Isaac. “You in there?”

“Not really,” I replied, which seemed to make everyone laugh, even if it wasn’t really a joke.

“We were just talking about hitting this bar down the street,” one of the guys whose names I still didn’t know  
said.

I shook my head. “Not for me. Not right now.”

“He can’t drink until Lent is over,” Taylor explained. “So basically, he’s no fun right now.”

I rolled my eyes at that, but didn’t dispute it. What was the point? Whatever they thought of me wouldn’t even come close to the reality, and I didn’t want them to know the reality anyway. Deflecting, making up excuses and cracking jokes came all too easily to me, even when I wasn’t trying. The more the lies kept coming, the less people paid attention to what I _wasn’t_ saying. It was just too easy to deceive them all, even my own brothers.

No one thought twice about me turning down their offer to continue the party elsewhere, and so we all parted ways quickly, my brothers off to get shitfaced and me on my way back to the hotel with another plan. I had picked up some good weed from one of our former opening acts who I happened to run into earlier that day, and I knew it was a strain that didn’t give me particularly bad munchies. My fast was safe, and I could relax for the rest of the day before starting the media circus all over again in the morning.

My hotel balcony was a bit of a joke, given that it faced an alley, but the lack of a view was made up for in privacy. I pushed my chair back against the wall, just in case anyone was looking, and lit up my pipe right there on the balcony of the seventh floor. Just a few hits, enough to take the edge off. Maybe I would hit it again before I went to bed, because it always helped me sleep. That little remedy got me through even the worst nights stuck on the tour bus. Hotels were never as comfortable as my bed at home, especially when I was all alone, so a little sleep aid was called for then as well.

Once I was pleasantly numb, I sat the pipe down and pulled out my phone. It probably wasn’t the best time to call Kate, not in my current state, but I had a sudden urge to hear her voice. It took just a few rings for her to answer.

“Hello?”

“Hey, babe,” I said. “Just thought I’d check in. Everybody else went out to party without me.”

Kate laughed softly. “Poor baby. At least I bet you can see your own feet right now.”

“Only because it’s a fast week,” I replied.

“Mmm, and I had Rocky Road for breakfast.” Kate’s shit-eating grin was practically audible.

“You’re going to miss being able to get away with that, aren’t you?”

She sighed. “I suppose. But I think the reward for all these months of morning sickness and backaches will be worth giving up the junk food.”

“I’m so proud of you, baby,” I said softly. “I dunno, maybe that’s weird to say. I just mean… god, I don’t know how you’re doing it. I’d be so scared. I _am_ so scared. Like, I don’t wanna touch you, breath on you or look at you wrong, like somehow that’s going to screw everything up. If I’m this scared now, what the hell am I gonna do with an actual little baby I could drop or hurt or—”

“But you won’t,” she cut me off. “You won’t drop him. Or her. You won’t hurt our baby. The fact that you’re so scared just shows how much you care, and I love you so much for that, Zac. And for everything. For sticking by me through all of this, through all of the… the… you know.”

I did know. I knew exactly what she meant. It took nearly a year for her to get pregnant again, after months of tests, special diets and prayers. We did everything, including some very acrobatic positions that I didn’t think you would find even in the Kamasutra. We tried anything and everything that claimed it could help us conceive again, and we had only just now, now that she’d entered her third trimester, exhaled and accepted that this really was happening. We really were going to have a baby.

And I was scared shitless.

I couldn’t explain all of my fears to Kate, but it wasn’t really fear of inexperience. I had enough siblings; I knew how to handle babies. That wasn’t the real problem. The real problem was… well, this kid shared my genes. And my genes contained a lot of fucked up thoughts and self destructive habits, and I didn’t think I was the only member of my family who could say that. It wasn’t a fluke. It was something I could pass on to a kid, and that made me feel so selfish for wanting to have kids at all. What right did I have to saddle a tiny, helpless human being with the sort of problems I had?

But Kate… she was perfect. So I could only hope her genes won out over mine.

“Thank you so much,” I practically whispered. “I love you so much, Katie. And our baby. I love our baby so much already.”

“I know you do. I do, too.” She sniffled, and I felt a twinge of guilt for making her cry, even if it wasn’t necessarily a bad sort of cry.

“I think maybe we’ll be alright,” I said softly.

“I think so, too,” she said. “And I also think I’m going to waddle my fat ass to the kitchen and have some of those frozen corndogs of yours.”

“Aww, no fair!” I replied. “You know those are my favorite.”

Kate giggled. “And you’re not here to eat them. Too bad, so sad.”

“You’ll pay for this,” I said, but we both knew it was a hollow threat.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kate replied. “Love you, too.”

“Love you,” I said. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Because it’s bad enough to know you’re eating my corndogs. I don’t think I could handle hearing it, too.”

We said our goodbyes and I reached for my pipe again. Maybe just a few more hits. It was almost sundown, the end of my fast for the day. A pizza would hit the spot, I decided. Pizza, weed and video games. A nearly perfect night in my world.

It would have been even better if Kate had been there, though. I knew I leaned on her too much and depended on her too much for my happiness, but I didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes I felt so guilty for it, when I knew that what she had gone through over the last year and a half was even worse than what I’d experienced. But she seemed so strong, so faithful and so resilient. She was all the things I wasn’t sure I could ever be.

But maybe, just maybe, if I clung to her, I could somehow absorb some of that strength. Maybe I could learn to be like her, and I could support her the way she supported me. Sometimes I wondered if she knew just how much I depended on her to hold me together, but I didn’t dare ever tell her. She might have seemed strong, but what would it take to break her? I didn’t want to know, and I damn sure didn’t want to do anything to put a crack in that perfect façade.


	8. Chapter 8

I liked running.

One of our crew had taken it up and suggested that it might help me to blow off some steam, too. He was right. It was solitary, yet not. You just didn’t have to interact with any of the people around you or even look at them long enough to catch their eye. In an instant, you were gone, yards away, on to something else.

And I hated running.

It left my feet sore and my lungs burning. Some days I barely had the energy to get through soundcheck if I went for a run first. At least I could sit down during the concerts and rest my weary legs.

I should have known that it was too hot to run in Dallas, but I didn’t listen to that small, rational voice inside my head. The need to exercise, to work off the large breakfast I’d had, was too strong. The voice that told me I needed the pain, needed to hurt if I was going to improve myself at all… that voice won out. And since I couldn’t actually claw my skin off and rid myself of the extra pounds that way, going for a painful run in the blistering heat was the next best option.

I didn’t know how far I had run, but according to my phone, I’d been gone for over an hour when I finally returned to the venue. It was already bustling with people, setting up our equipment and getting everything ready for the show later that night. Maybe I had been gone longer than I thought. No one even seemed to notice my absence or my return.

In a haze, I scurried past everyone, searching for the venue bathroom. My vision blurred and I clung to the walls to hold myself up. Was I drunk? I felt drunk. This was nothing like the runner’s high I had been promised, and more like a really bad trip. Finally, I stumbled into a small bathroom stall and collapsed to my knees in front of the toilet. The omelet I had eaten for breakfast, and the hash browns too, paid me a second visit.

I supposed I no longer needed to worry about any weight gain from _that_ meal.

As I pulled myself shakily to my feet and washed off my hands and face, my mind flashed back to a day years ago in California. It was the only and one time I had actually stuck my finger down my throat, and I had done it almost as a dare, just to see if I could. A test I had failed, but at least I failed it just the once. That counted for something, I had told myself then. Even if I skipped meals or spent too long in the makeshift gym set up in a corner of our studio, it wasn’t like I had one of those eating disorders. I wasn’t _that_ crazy.

Or was I?

I ran a hand up and down my torso. Two ribs now. Months ago I couldn’t count a single one. My abs were still nothing to write home about, but I knew I had lost weight. Unlike Kate, I wasn’t tracking my progress, but she had an ultimate goal—to back to her pre-baby weight. Did I have a goal? I didn’t know. I just knew I needed this. I needed to lose. I needed to change. I needed something that was just between me, myself and I.

“Hey,” a muffled female voice said at the door. Bex. “Is that you, Zac? It’s just about time for the walk. Meeting at the doors in five.”

How long had she been there? How much had she heard? Realistically, I knew she had probably looked everywhere for me, and when I had been nowhere else, she had assumed by process of elimination that I was the one hiding in the bathroom. And anyway, I hadn’t done anything wrong. So why did I feel so guilty?

There wasn’t time for a shower, so I had to settle for a quick change of clothing, a few swipes of deodorant and a spray of some of Ike’s cologne to make myself presentable enough for the fans. With my hair tied back in a ponytail, it didn’t look horrible. Maybe no one would get close enough to smell me. I could only hope.

I didn’t want to sound ungrateful, though. The walk thing was still fairly new, having only started the previous fall, and I wasn’t sure we had really worked out all of the kinks yet. They weren’t roving meet and greets, but at times they felt like it. How close was too close? How much small talk was necessary to keep things from being awkward and how much was too much to be respectful to the cause? None of us really knew.

I hung back as Taylor gave his speech, easily hiding myself behind him. Even after we started walking I stayed to the back, where the fans always seemed more relaxed and just happy to be there. Still, a few tried to engage me in conversation, and I tried my best to be polite. Whether or not I succeeded was anyone’s guess. Most likely… not.

“This may be weird to ask,” one fan said, and it was pretty much a guarantee that whatever followed would be weird. I braced myself for the worst. “But have you lost weight lately?”

“Umm, I guess, a little,” I replied, knowing damn well that I had.

“How do you do it? I can never loose any,” another fan said.

I shrugged. “Running, eating healthier. Cutting down on alcohol. I’m not really trying or anything.”

The lies fell out so easily, especially when said when a goofy grin that suited the dumb blonde routine well. Would a guy like me really care about his weight? Did I look like someone who counted calories and ate vegan? Of course not. That was the way to get away with it. When the reality is so different from the image you’ve built up, who’s going to question you? The fans would see what they wanted to see, as they always did.

The conversation, thankfully, shifted away from my weight loss and diet tips, and I gradually shifted away from that group of fans entirely. I wasn’t trying to be antisocial, exactly, even though I was constantly accused of being exactly that. It wasn’t that I didn’t _like_ people. I wanted to be social. I just never really understood how to be. It felt like I was constantly putting on an act, turning myself into whatever person I thought this group or that group of people wanted me to be. And I was good at it, but it was exhausting. Sometimes, like right then, I just needed a break.

I tuned out for the rest of the walk; I didn’t even hear Taylor’s speech. It’s sad to say, but I’ve learned how to operate on auto-pilot. Paste on a smile, nod at the right times, and no one noticed that I had checked out entirely. Maybe it wasn’t healthy. Or maybe it was the healthiest thing I did, the only thing keeping me sane at all. I didn’t know.

In what seemed like just a matter of seconds, it was all over and I was back in the venue. There still wasn’t time for a shower before soundcheck, but there was at least a little time to breathe. I found myself in the same bathroom, staring in the same mirror again, and I wasn’t sure I recognized myself at all.

I had lost weight; that girl was right.

It was noticeable, but only to someone who had obviously watched me closely over the years and probably knew me better than I knew myself. I could see it, because I looked at myself in the mirror every day, but sometimes I was convinced it was just an illusion. One day I looked thinner, the next day I was suffocating under all the excess weight I seemed to be carrying. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and I didn’t know which feelings to trust. Which was real? Maybe I should start weighing myself and counting calories. Then I would know. Then the proof would be laid out in front of me in black and white.

I could do it right this time. Be healthy. I was just a dumb, depressed teenager before, and it wasn’t like I was even trying to lose weight then. If I were trying now, and if I really dedicated myself and did it right, then I would have to be successful.

This was another test. But this time, I thought I was passing.

I gave the flab on my hips one last pinch, then shook my head and stepped away from the mirror. I had done all I could for that day. But the next day was a new beginning. In the morning, I could begin fresh and really do things right. Count calories. Go for a run every day, no matter how much pain it left me in. I’d earned the pain.

The bathroom door opened and I jumped, my heart racing. Why did it feel like I’d been caught? Of all the bad things I’d done and gotten away with over the years, why did staring at myself too long in the bathroom mirror feel like a sin?

“Oh, hey,” Taylor said, glancing me up and down with his brow furrowed. I was sure he was trying to figure out what I had been doing. What _had_ I been doing?

“Sorry, I’m finished,” I said. “Bathroom’s all yours.”

Taylor patted my chest, sniffed the air and scrunched up his nose. “I dunno, man. I think you could use a shower. Did you take your run in a sauna or something?”

“Something like that,” I mumbled.

Even my own brothers had to scrutinize my every move. I hadn’t even realized that they had known about my run that afternoon, but apparently Taylor, at least, noticed more than I thought. It made me feel even more like I needed to hide, but what was I doing wrong? What was so wrong about trying to be healthier? It seemed I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. No one would ever be happy with any of it.

Except for Kate. With the roller coaster ride our last two years had been, health and diet were always at the forefront for her. She was naturally skinny, but being skinny _and_ healthy weren’t necessarily the same thing. With everything we had gone through trying to get and stay pregnant, she’d become a walking encyclopedia on all things healthy living, and it only pushed me further to try to improve myself.

Leaving Taylor in the bathroom, I walked out into the green room where members of our band and crew were enjoying the last few minutes of relaxation before soundcheck began. A table was laid out with all the food and drink we’d requested, but none of it interested in me. I knew I needed to fuel up before our performance, but I couldn’t do it. Nothing was appetizing at all. I picked up a bottle of water and forced myself to take a few slugs, and even that seemed to sink to the bottom of my stomach like a rock.

This was a test, alright. But I wasn’t so sure about my grade.


	9. Chapter 9

Twenty pounds, give or take a few.

Apparently, I _had_ lost a lot of weight this year. That fan wasn’t just bullshitting me. At least, twenty pounds was my best guess. I had gone for years without really worrying about it, just estimating based on how my clothes fit, so I couldn’t really say for sure. Now it nagged at me, this uncertainty about just how much progress I had made. I wanted to be able to pin a definite number on it, to know with certainty, although I doubted anyone else but me truly cared.

There was one person who I was sure would notice, though. I stood in the airport in Atlanta, nervously tapping my foot and hoping I was at the right place. Finally, after what felt like hours, I saw a familiar figure around the corner. I would know her long, dark hair anywhere, even if she did look different now. There was just something different about the way she carried herself since Shepherd was born. Not to mention that it was still a bit disconcerting to see her, the girl I’d been with since I was fifteen, the girl I’d lost my virginity to, pushing a stroller—although right then, she was on her own. My mom had agreed to keep Shepherd so we could have a few days to ourselves.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said. It was the first thing out of her mouth, but there was no judgment in her voice. It was just a statement of fact.

“Yeah, a little bit,” I kissed her forehead and took the massive bag from her arms. “You look good, too.”

“But not any skinnier,” she said, something of a teasing tone to her voice.

I shrugged. “Still beautiful. You know I wouldn’t care either way; if you were a hundred pounds or four hundred.”

It was the truth. I loved her for who she was, not how she looked. It was only myself I judged so harshly and held to such high, nearly impossible to reach standards. I hoped she knew that. I hoped she knew it wasn’t just a line.

Her flight had been a late one, so we loaded her luggage into a taxi and headed straight back to my hotel to eat a late night dinner of Goodfellas Pizza. I picked at one large slice of veggie lovers, and Kate did the same. I wondered when we had become so similar, but I supposed that happened to all couples after so many years together. If there wasn’t some similarity to begin with, it never would have worked. Now that we were older and settled into our relationship, it wasn’t really surprising at all that we seemed to practically be twins.

Maybe I should have found it depressing that, at only twenty-two, I felt like I had been married my whole life. But that was just how I had always felt--years and years older than I really was. Maybe it _was_ depressing, but it was just a fact of life for me. Call it having an old soul or call it being a jaded child superstar. If it wasn’t normal, how should I know? It was _my_ normal.

“Alright, I think it’s bedtime,” Kate said, picking up the still half full box of pizza and setting it on the extra bed. “And next time, we’re staying some place with room service so we can order something with a little less grease.”

“Deal,” I replied. “Does that mean you’re coming to visit again?”

“Just these few shows, I think,” Kate said, climbing into bed next to me and pulling up the covers. “It’s already been rough on the little man, and it’s not so easy on his mama, either. When did we get so old? When did _I_ get so old?”

Hadn’t I just been asking myself the same question? We really were like twins. I chuckled softly and kissed the top of her head. “You’re not old. Because if you’re old, I’m old, too. I feel it, though.”

“Do you know what I would kill for right now?” Kate asked, her voice taking a husky, seductive tone. She leaned in closely, and I shivered a little, realizing just how long it had been since we had been together. “A foot massage.”

I laughed loudly, and the moment probably should have been ruined, but somehow it wasn’t at all. I leaned in and gave Kate a soft kiss. “When we’re done with… other things… then we can talk about a foot massage.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” she replied softly, her voice little more than a whisper.

I held my breath as I watched Kate undress. Despite what she said about her body now, she looked more beautiful to me than she ever had. For once I didn’t feel like I needed the lights off to undress myself; besides, after a month of not seeing my wife, I wanted to be able to see and remember every moment of this.

To my surprise, Kate nudged me onto my back, but I was all too happy to comply. My eyes fell shut as she kissed her way up and down my body, and I wondered what I’d done to deserve such special treatment. I would definitely have to return the favor later, but I wasn’t so sure I could last long enough to return it right then.

She held me in place, only allowing me to place my hands on her hips to help guide her into position. From the very first second, there were stars exploding behind my eyes. I dug my fingernails into Kate’s hips, enjoying—though I would never dare tell her—having a little more to hold onto.

“You’re getting so skinny,” she remarked, running her hand up and down my chest and making me shiver.

I didn’t want to hear any more about that, even if I was rather proud of myself. It was just awkward to talk about, even with my wife. I grasped her hips harder and flipped her over, hoping to distract her with other thoughts. I was so close already, I couldn’t stop myself from thrusting harder and harder until Kate was gasping and grabbing fistfuls of the sheets in her hands.

How it could still feel so good, so new, after years together… I didn’t know. She was still only one of two girls I had ever slept with. We had broken up on a misguided theory that we needed to date around a bit to be certain we were meant to be together. I fell into bed with another girl then, but it wasn’t the same at all. When I finally confessed that to Kate, she admitted to more or less the same thing with some frat guy. I had thought there was no way I could compare to a guy like that, but Kate wanted me and only me.

And she still did.

I was sure I would wear her scratches for a week, but I didn’t care. I pressed my forehead against hers and rolled my hips so hard against hers that I wondered if it was actually possible to break bones that way.

I came with a pathetic whimper and collapsed on top of Kate. If I had it my way, I decided, I would just never move again. After a moment, though, she gave me a gentle nudge and I felt more than heard her chuckle into my hair.

Taking the hint, I rolled over and stared up at the ceiling, a smile on my face that hurt my cheeks. I realized, with a start, that I couldn’t remember the last time I had really smiled, aside from onstage. Concerts were guaranteed to raise my mood, but could anything else? It was a short list: just Kate and Shepherd.

That probably should have been a depressing thought, but nothing could bring me down right now. My smile remained in place as Kate stood up and padded to the bathroom. I pulled my boxers back on while she was gone, and had just settled under the covers when she walked back into the room, now sporting my t-shirt, which was laughably over-sized on her.

“Not a bad way to say hello again,” Kate remarked as she climbed into bed and curled up at my side.

“Kinda makes you wanna leave and come back again, just to do it all over again, doesn’t it?”

She laughed. “Well, I don’t know about that. But we’ve certainly got a lot of time to make up for.”

“We certainly do,” I agreed. “And we can start again tomorrow. Right now, I am exhausted.”

Kate kissed my cheek. “You’re taking care of yourself, right? I know it’s the mother in me talking now, but I just worry about you when you’re gone.”

“I know you do,” I replied. “But it’s okay. And I am.”

“Are you sure? Don’t just… don’t just say it because it’s what you think I want to hear.”

Could she see through me? But no. That was silly. There was nothing to see. I was being healthy this time; I knew I was. I shook my head. “I’m not just saying it. I’m doing good. Better than ever.”

“Good,” she said. “It’s just, you know, I know how you can get when you’re stressed. You won’t eat, you’ll smoke too much, you’ll stay up all night. You run yourself into the ground, but you keep on going somehow, like a zombie. So you don’t even notice anything’s wrong.”

“But nothing’s wrong this time,” I replied, and I wondered if I sounded convincing at all. I wasn’t sure _I_ even believed myself anymore.

“Just keep it that way, okay?” Kate asked, a small smile on her face. At least it seemed I had managed to assuage her fears… this time.

“I will,” I replied, then kissed her forehead. “For you. I don’t like how much you worry.”

“Do it for you, too,” she replied softly.

“Okay.”

For me. Wasn’t I doing this for me? The exercise and the dieting? I wasn’t so sure anymore _why_ I was doing it, only that it seemed necessary. When every fiber of my body seemed to be screaming at me that I had to lose weight, who was I to argue? I wasn’t hurting anyone else, and I certainly hadn’t lost enough weight to be hurting myself. If exercising a bit too much helped me cope, what was so wrong with that?

Kate fell asleep long before I did. I stayed awake with my thoughts, pondering whether or not it was possible for a coping mechanism to be healthy. I didn’t come to any conclusions before exhaustion won out and I drifted off to sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

Fast days were my most and least favorite days of the week. I couldn’t just skip them, since Kate and I had agreed to call or text and remind each other. The rules weren’t that strict, but in a crew full of meat lovers who wouldn’t know kale if it walked up and bit them on the ass, following the rules often left me sitting in some greasy diner with nothing to eat but a wilted side salad and tea.

Regardless of my love/hate relationship with my body, I liked food. I liked food too much to torture myself like that.

The end result was that I usually ate alone on Wednesdays and Fridays, having given up on convincing my brothers and our crew to try any vegan restaurants. A few more of our family members had joined us for a few days, though, including Avery and a few of her friends. I had heard one of the girls, Juniper, say that she was vegetarian, so when lunch time rolled around I decided to invite the three of them along to join me. It might have been odd company to keep, a bunch of eighteen year old girls and me, but for whatever reason I had always been closer to Avery than the rest of my younger siblings.

I searched all over the venue for them, since they were supposed to be helping with the merch booth, before someone finally said they thought Avery and Cordelia had gone back to the bus. I headed that way, and was pleased to find that for once the bus door took my key easily.

Avery and Cordelia both jumped nearly a foot in the air when I walked in. Instinctively, I sniffed the air and looked around for alcohol, drugs, boys--anything to explain why they looked so guilty.

Nothing.

The three of us were locked in an awkward staring contest for a moment, no one willing to break the strange silence. What the hell was going on here? And why did Avery look like she was about to cry? Probably some boy drama, I decided. It hadn’t been that long since she and Jeremy had broken up—a few months, maybe, but I knew how that sort of thing could be drawn out and last seemingly forever to teenagers.

Deciding that had to be the problem, I cleared my throat and forced a smile. “You girls hungry? I was going to walk over to this place called Luna’s a few blocks from here. Vegan food. And you know nobody else on this tour is going to eat that stuff.”

“I’m surprised you do,” Avery replied, giving me a weak smile of her own. “Are you sure you’re my brother? Maybe you’re an evil clone.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, giving her a big grin. “But who says I’m the evil one?”

That seemed to break the tension and they both agreed to join me. It took a few more minutes to locate Juniper, and then the three of us took off down the street. We walked in awkward silence, and I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to break the tension. Maybe inviting three young girls along with me hadn’t been my brightest idea. They weren’t fans and I had no desire to flirt with Avery’s friends, so I really had nothing at all to say to them.

Once we reached the restaurant and were seated, the girls came to life again, gushing over the various smoothies they wanted to order. Whatever weird conversation I had walked in on Avery and Cordelia having was seemingly forgotten, and I even felt myself relaxing a little.

The girls took my offer to pay for all of our meals about as well as I expected a bunch of college students to, but I didn’t mind how much they all ordered. I was just happy not to be alone, even if I did feel rather excluded from their conversation. It was nice to have company that didn’t expect me to be talkative, behave a certain way or entertain them.

Handing the waitress my menu, I said, “Just the arugula salad and a lemonade, thanks.”

“That’s all?” Avery asked. “What happened to my brother the bottomless pit?”

I shrugged. “It’s a big salad. But I don’t wanna stuff myself before soundcheck; otherwise, I’ll just fall asleep at my drums.”

They laughed at that, seeming to buy my joke as plausible. For someone like me, it probably was. It was enough to move the conversation away from my eating habits, at least for the time being, and I lapsed back into silence as the three of them resumed their own conversation. Avery’s friends were a little older; they had both started college that fall while Avery was taking some time off after getting her GED to decide where she wanted to go. Listening to them talk about college classes was totally foreign territory for me, but somewhat interesting nonetheless.

My interest was piqued when one of the girls mentioned some political rally on their campus, but Avery waved a hand at her. “Let’s not start talking politics. Don’t wanna upset the conservative over here.”

“Who, me?” I asked. “Conservative?”

“You are observing a religious fast day,” Juniper pointed out. “I mean, no offense, but you’re not eating vegetarian for ethical reasons or anything.”

I shrugged. “I like routine. I like the church, and I assume Avery does too, or she wouldn’t keep coming back to it. Doesn’t mean I’m _that_ conservative, though. I like to keep an open mind, even if I don’t agree with everything I see and hear.”

“Sure you do,” Avery replied, reaching across the table to pat my arm. It was a little patronizing, but I knew she didn’t mean it. She was the resident bleeding heart liberal of the family, and the rest of us looked pretty conservative by comparison, even when we really weren’t.

The other two girls excused themselves to the restroom, and I decided this was my chance to ask Avery about what I’d seen either. Maybe I should have let it go, but the two of us really were close. I could tell something was still bothering her, and it didn’t seem right to just let that go.

“So,” I said, setting down my fork and propping my elbows up on the table. “How are things in Avery Land lately?”

She shrugged. “Just enjoying the time to travel and not worry about what I’m going to do next.”

“Must be nice,” I replied, nodding. “I mean, the not worrying. I know how great the travelling can be. Helps you figure out who you really are, doesn’t it?”

Avery gave a little start and sat down her avocado and basil sandwich. “Yeah… yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“You sure everything’s alright?” I asked. There was something in her voice, some little something in the look in her eyes that told me she was hiding something, but I had no idea what.

And maybe it was something she wanted to keep hidden. Who was I to demand that she tell me all of her secrets when I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell her mine?

“Nevermind,” I said, waving a hand dismissively. “I know you. If something’s wrong, you’ll make sure everybody knows. And you’ll make sure that big brother Zac fixes it for you, I’m sure.”

Avery laughed softly, but her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Just as long as you do the same if something’s wrong with you.”

“I will,” I replied, knowing it was a lie. But Avery didn’t need to know that. She needed the tough, invincible big brother she’d always thought I was. She didn’t need to see my pitiful, weak side; it wouldn’t be good for her or for me.

“Then we’ve got a deal,” Avery replied.

Her friends return to the table then and put an end to our conversation, but I had a feeling it was only the end for right then. Something was happening with her, and I wanted to the bottom of it, even if I broke my promise and didn’t tell her a damn thing.

What could she do for me, anyway? And what, exactly, could I have to tell her?

Despite a nagging feeling of dread, despite the anxiety that gnawed at me, my life was going fairly well. I had a great wife, with whom I had created an adorable little baby, and I was on tour doing what I loved best. What did I have to feel so anxious about? The feeling was clear enough, but the cause was still hazy.

Later, when we walked back to the venue, Avery hung back from her friends and walked next to me. I could tell she wanted to say something, but I didn’t speak first. I just gave her a little nudge with my elbow, knowing she would understand. _I’m here. I’m listening. I’m ready when you are._

“Hey, Zac,” she said softly. “What if, after all this traveling, I don’t figure out who I am at all?”

“Who says you have to? You’re young; there’s plenty of time.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” she replied. “I mean, you’ve known who you were since you were, like, nine.”

“Not really,” I said softly, shoving my hands into my pockets. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love being a musician. That’s who I am. A drummer. A singer. A songwriter. But I’m not a celebrity, and that was never what I wanted. But… sometimes you gotta deal with stuff you don’t like to get what you do, I guess. And anyway, in the beginning, I was just along for the ride. It took me a while to really understand it all. And maybe I still don’t. So don’t feel like there’s some timeline, like you have to know who you are and what you wanna be by any certain age. It’s not a race.”

“I guess not,” she said, but I could tell she still wasn’t convinced. “And what if you figure out who you are… but you’re not sure you like yourself very much?”

I sighed heavily. “That one… that one, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for. I wish I did.”

It might not have been the answer she was looking for, but it was the most honest thing I’d said to her all day.


	11. Chapter 11

“Your turn.”

I blinked a few times, and slowly the joint in front of my face came into focus, perched between Carrick’s long, thin fingers. I only vaguely remembered how I had ended up at this party, something our opening act had thrown together for my birthday at a friend of a friend’s house or something. I was pretty sure no one at the party really cared about my birthday at all, but by that point, I didn’t really care either.

“Yeah,” I finally replied and plucked the smoldering joint from his hand.

It popped and crackled as I took a long, deep hit and passed it to the nameless guy on the couch next to me. We continued in that fashion for what felt like hours, and I was sure at some point someone must have brought out another joint or two. It was the never-ending joint, it seemed.

As parties went, this one was fairly chill, in spite of the various controlled substances being passed around like candy. Weed was my only predilection, though not for lack of opportunities. I just didn’t see the point in trying anything else; the cons of most other drugs seemed to outweigh the pros. Aside from that one time someone convinced Ike that we should all try some magic mushrooms, my drug habits were altogether boring and predictable.

I was perfectly happy to be predictable, though. Even though I was probably one of the younger guys at this party, which was ostensibly in my honor, I felt like the oldest fuddy duddy of the bunch. I parked my ass on the couch and stayed there, nursing a beer and smoking whatever was passed my way.

The weed took the edge of the anxiety I had felt lately. I couldn’t put a better name to it than that. Just… anxiety. It was this itch right below the surface, crawling under my skin and struggling to break free. Inside my brain was an incredible, deafening roar, a static of thoughts swirling so fast that I couldn’t pin any of them down. I couldn’t even say _why_ I felt that way. What was so urgent? What was it, constantly screaming at me?

I tried to exercise it away, run until my body ached so much I couldn’t even think. Sometimes that worked. Other times, the weed was the only thing that helped, but it started another sort of vicious cycle. If I smoked, I ate, and if I ate, I needed to exercise more. There was no way to win, but at least for the moment, when I was stoned out of my mind, I didn’t care.

Some guys were playing Halo, and I found myself immensely fascinated just to watch. I wasn’t sure how long I had sat there watching, but I was vaguely aware of the fact that I was sinking further and further down. I wondered if eventually I’d just end up in the floor. Someone would probably get a laugh out of that, at least.

What a way to spend my twenty-third birthday.

“Hey,” a voice said, and after a moment, my brain tuned in and recognized it. Carrick. “You alright, man? Cal said it was cool if we wanted to just crash here. I don’t think you’re in any shape to make it back to the hotel, and I _know_ I’m not. Hell, I don’t even remember what hotel it was.”

“I’m pretty good right here,” I mumbled, but I wasn’t so sure that was true. I could feel the anxiety creeping back in, aided by the cliché paranoia that often came with potent weed.

Carrick just nodded and clapped me on the shoulder. “Alright, alright. Happy birthday, man.”

At some point, the party around me died down but I remained in my spot. The dull roar of stubborn partiers faded out entirely, and I drifted off to sleep. When I woke again, the sun was shining through the blinds and I couldn’t quite remember where I was. I had slept a dark, dreamless sleep, but it wasn’t without terror. Some nameless something seemed to threaten to pull me down every time I closed my eyes; it was a nightmare of sorts that had plagued me for years. And Kate wondered why sometimes I would rather stay up all night playing video games than sleep.

I stumbled into the kitchen, stepping over a few sleeping bags, both empty and full. Someone had brought over a cake I had been given at the venue; the night was such a drug-induced blur that I couldn’t even remember who but I recognized the cake. I fumbled around in kitchen drawers until I located a fork, and sat down the table with the cake, box and all.

I didn’t stop until a good third of the cake was gone and my stomach was cramping. It wasn’t _that_ large of a cake, but there was no excuse for that. Was I still stoned? I didn’t feel stoned. I felt like I was going to be sick.

Not knowing where the bathroom was, I rushed to the kitchen sink and leaned over it. Nothing. I contemplated sticking my fingers down my throat, but I really didn’t think that was the best impression to leave in someone else’s home. At least our hotel had a nice gym. I would be spending a few hours in there before the walk, I decided.

A moment from the previous night flashed into my memory. It had the haze and unreality of a dream, but when I stuffed my hand into my pocket, I knew it was real.

 

_The guy to my left, I thought his name was Drew, passed the small pipe my way. It wasn’t the best I’d had, but who was I to turn down free weed? After two puffs, I passed it on to the next guy, whose name I didn’t know at all._

_Drew gave me a nudge. “You know what’s really good?”_

_“What?” I asked, in spite of myself. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, and the question—along with the weed, I was sure—left my mouth dry._

_“This,” he said, opening his hand up to reveal a few pills like some comic parody of a drug dealer._

_I stared at him, waiting for an explanation that I was sure was coming, whether I wanted it or not._

_“Adderall. Kinda levels you out, but makes it all more intense, too.”_

_An ADD drug. I knew the name well, given how many times people had joked that I needed something for my hyperactivity. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard of people mixing it with weed, either, but I had never tried it._

_First time for everything, I supposed._

_I plucked the three little tablets from his hand and stuffed them into my pocket, mumbling a thank you. Would I take them? Probably not. But it shut him up._

 

Three little peach pills. They looked harmless enough, but I knew better than that. Still, I couldn’t quite convince myself to throw them out or flush them down. A voice in my head said _save them_. You never know when you’ll need them. For what, I asked myself, feigning innocence. But I knew. It was essentially speed, and I wasn’t naïve enough not to know what that could do for me.

So I saved them.

I stuffed them back into my pocket and made a mental note to put them some place safe and hidden whenever I made it back to the hotel.

Another test. Another failure.

In my other pocket, I found a roach and it took only a little work to locate someone’s abandoned lighter tossed carelessly onto the kitchen counter. It wasn’t much, but I fired it up anyway and sucked out the last little bit it had to offer. It soothed my stomach, at least.

“Hey,” Carrick said, stumbling into the kitchen and running a hand through his hair, which was sticking up in at least ten different directions. “Glad to see you survived the night. You wanna help me locate Austin and Mikey, and we’ll hit this little diner I love down the street?”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied weakly. I stubbed out the roach, shrugged, and gulped it down. The chocolate cake was already sitting in my stomach like a rock; I figured one roach on top of it couldn’t hurt.

Carrick just chuckled and walked out of the room, calling out to his bandmates.

I stuck my hand back into my pocket and fingered those three little pills. Would I take them? Was it even a question? The better question was _when._ How long would I be able to hold out before temptation won? I had a feeling it wouldn’t be very long at all.


	12. Chapter 12

I held out for a whole week before curiosity took over and temptation won. A part of me was surprised I even made it that long.

I drew the short straw on a phone interview, and thanks to differing time zones, it required me to wake up at an ungodly hour to take the call. Even a Mountain Dew from the hotel’s vending machine wasn’t helping to wake me up, and I had never acquired a taste for coffee like my brothers had.

“So, what’s it like to be on the road again?”

I rattled off some stock answer about how great our fans were, how great it was to share our music in new cities—at some point even I tuned myself out. It was a boring question, and it deserved a boring answer.

What was it like _not_ to be on the road? That was a better question. Since finally getting the record label going, we had made a point to tour even more than before. Counting promotional things and all the time we had traveled to various cities and countries to record, I was beginning to feel like I had spent more of my life on the road than at home. Someday, I decided, I should do the actual math, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the depressing answer.

“...all three married with children now, is that right?”

“Yeah,” I replied, rolling my eyes and thanking god that the interviewer couldn’t see. How boring could these questions get? How much less about the music? “Yeah, I’ve just welcomed my first this year, so suffice it to say I’m sleeping a lot less whether I’m on the road or at home.”

“I’ll bet,” the DJ said, then spun off into some anecdote about his own children.

He threw to a song soon, after asking my opinion on the artist, who I genuinely hadn’t even heard of before. Based on the autotuned garbage I could hear echoing through the speakerphone, I didn’t think I was missing much.

While the song played, my mind drifted. My wallet sat on the bedside table next to the phone, and I knew the three little pills were still tucked inside of it. My hand seemed to grow a mind of its own, reaching for the wallet and pulling out a pill. It looked almost like candy, but I knew better. I let out a yawn and my mind was made up.

With a swig of Mountain Dew, I swallowed it down.

The DJ came back on the line, and I painted on a smile even if he couldn’t see it. His questions were no better, but I felt myself loosening up, the haze in my mind dissipating and making it easier to pay attention and give not just the basic answers he was looking for, but even crack a few jokes.

“Well, it’s been great talking to you, Zac,” he said. “I know we’re all looking forward to your show here next week.”

“Yeah, definitely,” I replied, my chipper tone surprising even me. Was the Adderall kicking in already? I had no clue how long these sort of things took. “We’re looking forward to being back, and seeing all of our fans again. Hopefully they feel the same way.”

“I’m sure they do.”

The call wrapped up quickly after that, and for that I was grateful. I fell back onto the bed, the sound of my heartbeat loud in my ears. I listened to the not-so-steady thumpity thump of it and felt a bead of sweat rolling down the side of my face. The Adderall had kicked in, I was sure of that now. It was a little scary. But I was sure, down to my bones, that if I could pull myself from the bed, I could take on the world. I could feel it, throbbing just underneath my skin. For once, I was ready to face the day without dread.

One pill. But I knew it wouldn’t be the last.

****

I was putting weight back on, I was sure of it. It was hard to say for sure, when I rarely had a chance to weigh myself. I could only go by my own perception, and somewhere in the rational part of my mind, I knew that was skewed. But I could feel it. I could grab the flab on my sides, on my thighs, everywhere. If I could pinch it, hold it in my hand and feel it jiggle, then it had to be real. I couldn’t be imagining that.

Could I?

I was running every day, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough. I had to run farther, run harder. I started waking up early in the mornings, as painful as it might have been, so that no one would know how long I had been gone because they would still be asleep when I returned.

One morning, when I slipped my wallet into the pocket of my hoodie, out slipped another of those pills. Without thinking, I popped it into my mouth and swallowed it down dry. What could it hurt? Maybe it would give me an extra burst of speed—it was, after all, exactly that. I wasn’t naïve. I knew what I was taking. I just didn’t care.

I started off the run slowly, letting myself warm up. I could feel the moment when it kicked in and my feet seemed to magically become lighter. Everything was lighter and brighter. I was seeing the entire world with shocking clarity as I raced past it. A part of me wanted to stop and appreciate the view, but the bigger part couldn’t stop moving.

When I returned to the hotel, I realized that a full two hours had passed. It had felt like only minutes. Mere seconds. My heart was still racing and I collapsed onto my bed without even taking off my shoes.

I awoke sometime later to what sounded like ten thousand hands all trying to beat down my hotel door. After a few seconds, the accompanying voices came into focus—my brothers.

Although my body ached all over, I managed to pull myself out of the bed and pad to the door. I opened it only as far as the chain lock would allow and glared at Taylor. “What do you want?”

“You’re late,” he replied. “And you smell. Did you go for a run this morning? Already?”

“I did,” I replied, giving him a sneer. “And thank you.”

He stared at me for a moment. “Are you alright?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? I just got back from a run, as we’ve already established. Just let me take a shower. The venue will still be there.” I didn’t mean to snap at him, but the words just came out all wrong. Why wouldn’t I be alright? Thanks to my nap, most of the effects of the pill had worn off. I might not have been alright an hour ago, but I was perfectly normal and sober right then.

Taylor stared at me for a moment more, as though something on my face would tell him a different story than my words had. But what could possibly be there for him to see? And even if he could see it, how much of a hypocrite would he be for calling me out on my drug use?

With a sigh and a shake of his head, he said, “Yeah, alright. We’ll be in the lobby. You’ve got fifteen.”

“See you then.”

I didn’t wait for a reply before slamming the door in his face. I supposed this was the comedown; the last time, I’d been in motion so much that I hadn’t even noticed. But a good, hot shower ought to shock my system awake again.

Two pills.

I could have kidded myself that it was still just idle curiosity, but even then, I think I knew better.

****

I took the third before a concert, just because.

There was no point in pretending I had any other reason for it. There hadn’t been time that day for a run, I had eaten too much and I felt like climbing out of my own skin. I sat in the green room and picturing digging my fingernails in and clawing it off, inch by inch. It was a glorious thought, but I knew it was impossible. Still, it was tempting to try.

But one more pill. That was something I could do.

When no one was in the room, I plucked it from my wallet and washed it down with a cold beer. I downed the rest of the beer quickly, not thinking about the calories. I would burn them off during the concert, and then some, with the speed in my system.

That night, I heard every song in technicolor. Every missed note and every perfect one. I heard little quirks in the melodies that I had never noticed before. My own songs were brand new to me and felt like someone else had written them. I supposed I _had_ been someone else when I had written a few of the older ones.

The crowd, too, was in sharper focus than usual. I felt like I could see every single face and hear every single heartbeat. At first it was amazing, but somewhere along the way it became overwhelming. There were too many of them, with too many emotions, and I swore I could feel them all. At some point, I realized I was crying, salty tears mingling with the sweat running down my face. Luckily I had worn my hair down that night, and I doubted anyone but me could tell the difference anyway.

When the show ended and we had taken our bow, I rushed offstage and to the green room. I grabbed another beer from the cooler and downed half of it in one gulp. It tasted like everything and nothing all at once.

“Woo!” Isaac whooped as he came into the room. “I don’t know what you did differently tonight, but you were on fire.”

He clapped me on the back and I forced a big smile. I knew, of course, exactly what I had done differently but I couldn’t very well tell him that. Instead, I forced out a thanks and clinked my beer bottle against his.

Three pills.

Three, tiny little pills. And they were just the beginning, just the tip of the iceberg. Everything that threatened to pour out of my body, make me burst at the seams, I could finally channel it into something useful. I could use those emotions, and then, for a brief time… they were gone.

Three pills. That was all. Hardly worth counting at all, really. Three meaningless little pills.

[](http://e)


	13. Chapter 13

One hundred and fifty two pounds.

That number was replaying over and over in my head, constantly screaming at me. It hadn’t budged for days. It was smack dab in the middle of the healthy range for my height, according to some late night googling. But it didn’t feel healthy. It felt the same as one hundred and eighty three. I was still suffocating under all of these extra pounds and I couldn’t understand why people kept telling me I had lost so much. I had lost some, sure, but I still clearly had so far to go.

Every day was a new struggle, finding creative ways to get in my daily runs, tracking down the pitifully small hotel gyms, making different excuses for why I was skipping this meal or that. I put in so much effort just to cover my tracks, keep everyone off my back, that I thought those acrobatics alone ought to be burning enough calories to budge the scales. I was obviously mistaken.

During the days, it was easy enough. We were always on the move, always going from place to place, activity to activity. Rarely did we have a free moment that lasted long enough for a real, sit-down meal. Food had to be grabbed on the go and shoveled in quickly. Everyone was too focused on their own nourishment to notice if I only had a handful of carrots or one of the bottled teas that gave me the energy to keep going.

Nights weren’t as easy. More often than not, we drove straight through from one city to the next. For hours on end, we were confined to the bus, where it was harder for me to hide the fact that I wasn’t consuming anything but soda, tea and the odd vegetable.

Then there were the late night truck stops and diners. If I was lucky, I could find something semi-healthy on the diner menu and pick at it, but truck stops rarely offered anything other than potato chips and candy bars. The stale tasting sandwiches that could often be found in the coolers were my safest bet. Sometimes there were salads, but I didn’t trust truck stop salads. I didn’t really trust truck stops at all, but I didn’t have much of a choice. There were few other options right off the highway and arguing to stop somewhere else would just draw too much unwanted attention.

This particular truck stop, somewhere in the ass crack of Pennsylvania, had an even worse selection than most. It had been the only exit for miles, though, and the bus was running as empty as most of its occupants. My opinion would have meant less than usual, so I kept it to myself and stuffed my hands in my pockets as I walked up and down the aisles filled with empty calories.

Normally, I would bring my video camera into the truck stop with me, but I hadn’t had the energy to dig it out of my bag that night. As soon as I walked in the door, I regretted that. It provided a nice barrier between me and everyone else and distracted them further. Just put a camera in my brothers’ faces and they turned into completely different people, ready to entertain an audience that wasn’t even there. They never noticed the man behind the camera at all, and that was the way I liked it.

I didn’t have that buffer zone on this particular occasion, though. I was forced to wander around and pretend I was actually going to purchase some food. The Snapple in my hand was sweating all over my palm and my eyes were crossing as I stared at all the different, shiny wrappers of the various junk food options. I finally grabbed a few candy bars, deciding that I could just slip them into the stash in our kitchen for anyone to take. At least they would see me buying something and that would be enough to ease the minds of any particularly curious individuals.

With my meager selections in hand, I made my way to the counter. There was a long line, only partially made up of our band and crew, and I grew restless as we inched closer to the one register open at this late hour.

My eyes were drawn to the flashy displays around the counter, offering all sorts of items that no one really needed—or, alternatively, items that it was all too easy to convince yourself that you absolutely needed. Even if you already owned ten cell phone chargers, it wouldn’t hurt to buy an extra, right? Or perhaps a shiny new cigarette lighter emblazoned with the name of whatever town you were currently in.

Something else caught my eye right then, though.

If I’d had any doubt that this was one of the seedier gas stations we’d stopped at, those doubts vanished when I saw the rows of dubious “supplements” hanging from a spinning rack. They all promised energy, pain relief—so many things I needed. As I moved one spot closer to the register, I glanced upon one that was more enticing than the others. Nothing on the bottle overtly said diet pill, but I knew that was what it was. I also knew that it was the barely legal relative of the Adderall I had all too willingly popped days earlier.

And I knew I was going to buy as many packets as the cashier would allow.

I grabbed the only three on the rack and stuffed them in between a Snickers and a Skor bar. It took all the skill I had to balance everything in my arms, and my heart thumped in my chest as I dumped it all unceremoniously onto the counter. The bored cashier didn’t even look up at me as she rang up my purchases and rattled off the total.

As I handed her a few wrinkled bills from the depths of my pocket, I felt like I was getting away with murder.

The plastic bag seemed to weigh fifty pounds as it swung from my arm, but I knew that was impossible. I wondered if everyone could tell what I had done. Was it written all over my face? It must have been, based on the way my cheeks felt like they were on fire. My heart hadn’t stopped thumping yet, pounding out the beat to some unknown song that seemed to be ringing out my guilt for all the world to hear.

I was the first person back on the bus, and for that I was glad. No one needed to witness what I knew I was about to do. Should I have waited until the morning to take these pills I was sure would keep me awake for the rest of the night? The answer to that was obvious. Would I be able to wait? Based on the way my hands shook as I struggled to find one of the shiny, foil packets, I knew the answer to that question was clear, too.

According to the suspiciously short directions on the back, each packet contained enough pills for one day, the doses spaced out and meant to accompany a meal. I ripped the foil open and poured the pills into my hand. Six little green tabs, so innocuous looking. Almost like vitamins. I shoved the other packets in my pocket with my free hand and stared at the pills in my hand. Before I could think better of it, I shoved three of them into my mouth. Half a day’s dose all at once ought to kickstart my body into doing _something_ , I decided. One big swig of my tea and the pills were gone, off to work their magic in my bloodstream. The other three went into my pocket with the unopened packets, and I could only hope they were all safe there until I felt the need to dose myself again. I left the candy bars in the bag on the table, free for the taking, and collapsed onto the couch, waiting to feel whatever effect those pills might have.

Moments later, the bus began to fill up again and it buzzed with activity. There was an almost electrical hum to people sometimes, and the crowd that descended upon the bus right then was positively crackling with it. It made my head ache. My vision blurred, and I felt strangely drunk. It was like suddenly being dumped into hot water, and I feared it would start to boil.

“Oh, sweet!” Isaac exclaimed, his voice barely overcoming the din as he reached into the bag on the table and snatched up a Skor. “Who bought these? I _so_ should have gotten one.”

“You can have it,” I mumbled, the words almost slurred. Was I drunk? I felt drunk.

Isaac eyed me carefully, and I was sure he was asking himself he same question. After a moment, he shrugged and ripped the wrapper off the bar. I gave him a weak smile to assure him that it was fine, even if I was far from fine myself.

I wanted to say something else, but I couldn’t find the words. All I knew was that I couldn’t handle being in that crowd for a moment longer. The bus was closing in on me, and I wondered if anyone else felt that way. Rationally, I knew the feeling was in my imagination, but that didn’t seem to make it any less real. I was going to die here. I was going to suffocate. There was no question about it.

Pushing my way past everyone and through the door, I mumbled what I hoped passed for an apology. I wasn’t sure it really involved words at all so much as just garbled sounds. It was the best I could do right then.

The air outside was cold, colder than I remembered, and I had left my jacket throw across the back of the bus couch. Still, it felt better outside than in that rolling sauna. I gulped in lungfuls of the crisp night air and finally began to feel normal again. My skin was still crawling, but that was nothing new and I wasn’t sure anything would take that feeling away.

I barely even registered the sound of the bus door opening and closing again.

“There you are,” Taylor said, his voice only slightly chastising and more relieved. It was always a struggle to round everyone up again after a long pit stop.

“Are we leaving soon?” I asked, filling with dread at the thought of stepping on the bus again. I could also feel Taylor’s eyes on me, boring into me much the same as Isaac’s had.

“We are. In about five.” he replied. “Are you alright? You look…”

He trailed off, but I was sure there were a dozen words in his vocabulary for how I looked, even if amphetamines were never his drug of choice. None of those words left his mouth, though, because I was sure he couldn’t ever imagine any of them applying to me. I wasn’t so sure I could either, in spite of all the evidence in front of me.

“I’m fine,” I replied, the words coming out in such a sharp burst that they weren’t convincing at all.

“You should get some sleep,” Taylor replied, stepping in closer and putting his hand on my arm.

I jerked my arm back, as though somehow that one touch would reveal all of my secrets to him. Taylor stared down at his hand, his face painted with shock. My temper was nothing new to him, I was sure, but it usually took more than that to set me off. I didn’t like it, but there was nothing I could about it.   
I took a few deep breaths and tried to push all of my emotions down as far as they would go.

“Just let me get some fresh air,” I said, my tone as neutral as possible. Emotionless. Completely blank. It wasn’t very reassuring, but it was the best I could manage. “I’ll be on the bus before it pulls out.”

Taylor nodded, but he still recoiled away from me. There had been a brief glimmer of concern in his eyes, but it was gone and I was glad. I did regret snapping at him, but it had gotten the result I had wanted. Whatever he thought my problem was, I was sure it was nowhere near the reality, and his curiosity to know more had been tamped down, at least for the day. It would come back, I knew, but for the moment I could breathe easily knowing I had made it through one more day.

The next day would be better, I decided. With a sudden burst of energy, I headed back to the bus. There wasn’t much I could do to burn off that energy in a thirty foot tour bus, but a video game would burn off some steam and waste away the hours I already knew I wouldn’t spend sleeping. One long, uninterrupted day. Maybe if I never slept again, I wouldn’t have to dread the dreams or the reality that was even worse.


	14. Chapter 14

The television was too loud and the room was suffocating. I kept looking for a way to make my exit, but found none.

After our concert that night, we’d made our way back to the hotel and all gathered in the suite Taylor had somehow managed to end up with thanks to some clerical error. The guys from Everybody Else had made their way to Grant Park, wanting to witness what they saw as Obama’s inevitable win in a crowd of thousands of his other hometown supporters. My brothers, at least one being on the more conservative side, had decided that pizza, beer and election coverage on television was a better way to celebrate or commiserate, depending on what the outcome was.

Myself, I was torn. Not between the park and the hotel, though. I had absolutely no desire to be in a crowd full of people. Just surviving the concert was hard enough, and I felt like I was drowning when I looked at the audience packed into the floor and balconies of the Chicago House of Blues. I also had no desire to listen to my brothers’ political arguments, which only became louder and more offensive when alcohol was added to the equation. If I could have excused myself back to my hotel room and slept through the entire thing, I would have.

Unfortunately, it was made quite clear to me that that simply wasn’t an option. Instead, I was forced to stay, wishing I could sink down into the suite’s couch and disappear as more and more of our crew made their way in, each one bearing more food and alcohol.

I had to get away.

The best I could manage was stumbling to the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind me. With that and Taylor’s empty bedroom between me and the crowd, the sound was muffled to an almost bearable level. I wanted more than anything to light up, but I had left my pipe in my own room and I was reasonably certain that smoking any substances was forbidden in this hotel. Instead, I settled for digging a few pills from my pocket. I brushed off the lint, filled a small plastic cup with water from the sink, and swallowed them down.

I nearly choked on my own tongue when a knock came at the door and one of our roadies started cursing about how much he needed to piss. The roadies were a charming bunch, really. But I knew I wasn’t very pleasant to be around these days, either, and so I did little more than shoot him a glare as I opened the door and pushed my way past him.

“If you think for a second that your party cares at all about any of the issues we’re working on, any of the stuff that you act like _you_ care about, too—”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath at the sound of Taylor’s angry voice. He and Isaac were standing at the minibar, which was never a good place to find them when they were discussing politics. I grabbed a tiny bottle of vodka and chugged it down to help drown out Isaac’s reply to Taylor’s latest diatribe.

There was nowhere in the room to hide from the drunkenness and politics, though. Everywhere I looked, people were shouting slurred arguments and comments on the election results. I wasn’t aware everyone else on this tour was so political, but I supposed it was easy to get swept up in such an important election. I had other things threatening to pull me under, though.

The coffee table was covered in pizza boxes, bags of potato chips and even a box of cupcakes that had materialized from somewhere. My stomach turned, and I couldn’t decide if it was in hunger or disgust. I decided to go with disgust and turned away from the display.

My only possible escape now that the bathroom had proven impractical was the balcony. Everyone was too consumed with the party to bother going outside, it seemed, and I had the small balcony all to myself. The sounds of the street below, of cheers and jeers and car horns, didn’t make me feel any better, but it did drown out some of my thoughts. The worst ones, the ones telling me how easy it would be to fling myself off the flimsy railing, were too loud to ever be drowned out, and I had long since given up trying.

In my pocket, my phone began to buzz, and it drew me back to reality. A reality where I knew I couldn’t fling myself onto the street below, no matter how tempting it might seem.

The only person who ever called me who wasn’t already present was my wife, so I wasn’t surprised at all to see her name on the screen. Almost in spite of myself, I smiled as I swiped the screen and said, 

“Hey, Katie.”

“Hey, sweetheart,” she replied. “What are you guys doing tonight?”

“Well, most of them seem to be getting shitfaced and arguing about how we’re all going to hell in a handbasket or something,” I said. “Me, I’m just trying to ignore all of that.”

“Taylor and Isaac again?” Kate asked knowingly. “That’s why I stayed home. No offense, but your family gets a little intense about politics. At least I had the baby as an excuse not to be out late.”

“I don’t blame you,” I mumbled, although I doubted anything she might witness at the Hanson household could rival what was happening just a few feet away from me.

“Are you okay?” Kate asked. “I know, you’re not going to tell me if you’re not. But you know I have to ask. And you just sound… I don’t know. Off.”

I sighed. “I’m just tired. That’s all. We’ve been going pretty hard this tour.”

“Is that all?” She asked. I hated how well she could read me, but even she didn’t see everything. There were still parts of me that I would always keep hidden, even from my wife. Maybe I should have felt guilty for that. Maybe I did. I wasn’t sure what I felt anymore.

“That’s all,” I replied, trying to keep my voice light. The pills were working their way through my system, though; I could feel it. I tapped my fingers anxiously against the railing. “I feel like I’ve been on tour my whole life.”

Kate left out a soft laugh. “I think you have, honey.”

“You may be right,” I replied, trying to sound amused. But she wasn’t wrong. If I wasn’t touring, I was recording, writing, interviewing. My entire life had been work, work, work and just because it wasn’t a traditional nine to five job didn’t mean it wasn’t exhausting.

Even as I thought it, I knew I sounded like a spoiled brat. But I didn’t care. Regardless of the perks, it was just fucking depressing to realize I had been at work since the ripe old age of nine when all of this suddenly stopped being a cute little hobby. Did I even have a childhood at all? At the time, it had just felt like playing all the time, occasionally interrupted by pointless classes I didn’t need for the future, but now I wasn’t so sure. I had chosen it, yes, but who knows at nine what they really want to do with the rest of their lives?

I had always been drifting, I realized. It didn’t matter that deep down I knew music really was what I wanted to do. It still hadn’t been my choice. I had let myself be swept up by my brothers’ enthusiasm, and now I was drowning in the reality of it.

“Zac? Sweetheart?” Kate’s soft voice drew me out of my thoughts, and I crashed back into the real world.

Which was fucking loud. Cheers, screams and even fireworks were erupting all around, and it was both deafening and blinding.

“What the fuck,” I mumbled.

“Didn’t you hear?” Kate said, her voice straining and just barely loud enough to be heard over the din. “They just called it. Obama won.”

I glanced back into the hotel room, and through the sliding glass door I could see a surprisingly somber scene. Most of the room’s occupants were shocked, drunk or both; only Taylor and a few others sat quietly, showing their happiness just through silent, satisfied smiles.

“Wow,” I breathed out.

“I know,” Kate replied. “But I’ll let you get back to the party, okay? I just wanted to check in. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” I replied.

I hung up and took a deep breath, trying to breathe in all of the excitement around me, pulsing through the city itself. The truth was, I wasn’t a political person at all. I had my own beliefs, at least a few of them, but they rarely seemed to be in step with… well, anyone else in the world. Trying to follow all the talking heads and make sense of all their chatter was more than I could manage, and so I chose to go on my own way, ignoring all of that white noise.

But the sheer glee emanating from this city, even as viewed from twelve floors up, was impossible to miss. It was infectious. Maybe part of it was the amphetamine in my system, but it felt like my blood was actually bubbling. I let out a short laugh, then another, before dissolving into almost painful belly laughs that couldn’t be stopped. I couldn’t have even explained why I was so happy, if happy was really the right word at all.

I was too jaded to think that this election would change anything in my life. My world had nothing to do with congress or the changing economy or anything else old men in suits liked to talk about. Yet I still felt like I had turned some strange corner, and I refused to accept that it was only the fleeting, false happiness brought on by the pills I had swallowed.

The sliding glass door opened with a muffled whoosh, but I didn’t turn around. I was afraid if I did, I would lose what little grip I had on the railing and really fall. I didn’t want to fall. As high I was I flying at the moment, I knew that I couldn’t _really_ fly.

“Did you hear the news?” Taylor asked, suddenly appearing by my side with a beer in each hand.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Kate called. And, well, I think I could have figured it out from context clues.”

Taylor glanced at the scene around us and nodded. Without another word, he handed me one of the beers, already open and sweating profusely. I accepted it anyway and took a big swig. His job done, I supposed, Taylor clapped me on the shoulder and turned back into the hotel room.

The euphoria that had come over me just a moment before seemed to abandon me along with my brother. When the door clicked shut, it was like a switch had been flicked and I felt the blackness creep back in again. Maybe I hadn’t taken enough, I decided. I fished around in my pocket until I found two more little pills, all that was left of the bottle I’d found a few days ago. It was larger than the little packets I’d first purchased, but still seemed to vanish so quickly.

I swallowed the last two pills with a mouthful of cheap beer, but I didn’t taste any of it.


	15. Chapter 15

Another day, another interview.

It seemed we had done more interviews during this tour than we had done since the early days when everyone was so fascinated by us. There was something about the walks and all our charity work that fascinated people, I supposed.

We were scheduled to take the walk that day on some college campus--I couldn’t even recall the name of it; they were all the same to me--and the college newspaper was all too keen to interview us. I had to hand it to them; they had put a lot of effort into impressing us and appearing professional. Along with the carefully constructed studio set so that our interview could also be filmed for the on-campus television station, they had provided us with a green room stocked with food that I suspected was better than what the students ate.

I only grabbed a small plate full of vegetables, ignoring the canapes and cocktail shrimps that my brothers salivated over.

It wasn’t until the interview began that I regretted my choice of food. My stomach growled so loudly I was sure that the sound could be heard on camera. An entire campus full of college students who probably already thought they were way cooler than me would get to laugh at the strange noises my body made. Fantastic. As if I needed to give the rest of the world another reason to make fun of me, another reason to be convinced I was useless, worthless, pathetic.

“It’s not really about solving all of the world’s problems, but just taking small steps that anyone can do.” Taylor was droning on again, and I hoped his voice was covering my stomach’s cacophony.

I could barely even focus on what he was saying at all, but that was nothing new. It was all too easy to zone out while Taylor rambled; this wasn’t the first and I was sure wouldn’t be the last time I had lost all focus during an interview.

“Zac? Zac?” I heard someone saying and I blinked a few times to bring them into focus. It was Ike, his elbow digging into my side to punctuate his statement.

“Huh?” I said. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, we’re really happy to be working with people like Blake and Toms Shoes.”

The answer, I hoped, related to the question but I couldn’t be certain. Isaac still looked annoyed with me, but Taylor jumped right in, going off on another tangent about our latest trip to Africa to help distribute said shoes. I was off the hook, at least until he stopped speaking, but I knew that space out would come back to bite me in the ass later.

Thankfully, the interview was done quickly. They had wanted us to perform a song, but they weren’t really equipped for that. We managed a little a capella and that seemed to please the girl who had interviewed us. She was a fan, I decided. That was good, at least. If I had pulled such a disappointing performance with a non-fan interviewing us, I would definitely never live it down. But this girl, I could tell, saw us through rose colored glasses through which we could never possibly do any wrong. If only she knew the truth.

Once we were finally dismissed, I headed back to the green room first, but I knew my brothers were hot on my heels. I snatched a bottle of lukewarm water from the table and washed down a few pills, not even bothering to count the number. Because they were technically supposed to be taken with food, and my stomach had made its opinion on that subject well known during the interview, I grabbed a little vegetable pizza appetizer and popped the whole thing into my mouth at once. It tasted like cardboard.

I could feel my brothers eyes on me even before I turned around.

“What?” I asked, picking up another pizza and forcing it down just for show. I hoped neither Isaac nor Taylor could see the way I gagged on it, barely able to force even that small amount of food down my throat.

“You’ve been a real space cadet lately,” Isaac remarked. The words were slightly forced and rough around the edges; he had been fighting off what we had termed The Crud for a few days. Inevitably, at least one person per tour came down with The Crud, which tended to be somewhere between the average cold and a deadly case of the flu.

“I’m not sure how that’s supposed to be any different than usual,” I remarked.

“It is,” Ike said. “And really, I am not feeling at all like joking around with you about it. I don’t think you’ve answered a question in the last five interviews we’ve done. You’ve spoken, sure, but maybe one out of ten replies actually relate to what you’ve been asked. What the hell, man?”

I shrugged. “End of the tour? The Crud is spreading, I think.”

“That’s a weak excuse and you know it,” Taylor replied.

“You better hope you’re not coming down with what I’ve got,” Isaac said, punctuating the statement with an exaggerated sniffle. “One of these coughing fits would probably break half your ribs. Which, by the way, have been visible through your shirts lately. Eat a fucking hamburger.”

That wasn’t fair or true, I thought. Well, it wasn’t _untrue_. It was just an exaggeration. I was only down to a hundred and forty three pounds. That wasn’t even underweight for my height, although it was closer than I had probably ever been. As for the hamburger comment, I couldn’t even justify that with a response. A part of me wanted to rattle off the exact caloric content of the average fast food hamburger, and how that wouldn’t make a dent in my weight loss, but the other part of me knew that even that amount of food would make me feel bloated for days and like I wanted to claw my stomach out with my bare hands. Rather than reply with words, I just held up my middle finger. It wasn’t a creative comeback at all, but it was all I had and exactly as mature as Isaac seemed to expect from me. Who was I to disappoint?

Ike grabbed a bottle of water and wandered away then, mumbling about blowing his brains out. I hated that sort of hyperbole. What did he know about truly wanting to kill yourself, about having to keep the key to your gun case on your wife’s key chain just to keep yourself from having such easy access when the urge to see your brains splattered on the walls struck again? I knew he didn’t _really_ have those urges—what sane person did?—and that made it even worse when he threw out such flippant comments.

Taylor watched him walk away then turned back to me and offered a slightly more sympathetic look. But only slightly. “He’s not wrong, you know. I mean, you’ve lost a lot of weight. I know we all forget to eat on tour, but you can’t push yourself that hard. If you catch what he’s got, you might not have the strength to recover.”

“It’s a cold, Tay,” I replied. “Not the bird flu. And you know Ike’s always a big baby when he gets sick. He can play an entire concert with a blood clot threatening to make his whole damn arm explode, but god forbid he gets a sore throat or the sniffles.”

Taylor laughed at that, because he knew I was right. Our brother was a big baby who really didn’t care about anyone but himself when he got sick. I loved him to death, but even the slightest illness turned him into a drama queen. I really wasn’t concerned at all about his supposed complaints about my behavior.

“Look,” I said. “He’ll get over it. And I’ll answer every damn question in the next interview, if it’ll make him happy.”

“Somehow, I doubt that will make him happy,” Taylor replied, but there was still a slight smile on his face. It didn’t quite reach his eyes, but it was close enough. He was letting his guard down, ignoring the worries Isaac was trying to create. If we could joke around with each other, then nothing was wrong, right? I could practically see Taylor’s brain working, trying to convince himself of that because that lie was easier than trying to figure out what was really wrong.

For once, I was really glad that Taylor was an endless optimist. It was all too easy to play into that and make him see what he wanted to see. If he saw me laughing and smiling right then, he could ignore the moments when I wasn’t. It was easier to assume everything was going well. It was easier to ignore the bad. At least, for Taylor it was. In that way, I kind of envied him.

“Does anything _really_ make Ike happy?” I shot back, giving Taylor a lopsided grin.

“Whiskey, I think,” Taylor replied, looking mock thoughtful. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea, with that cold he’s got. Buy him a bottle of whiskey and make him a hot toddy. Kill two birds with one stone.”

“If I ply him with whiskey, do you think he’ll lay off?” I asked. “Will you both lay off?”

Taylor’s smile fell. I had said the wrong thing, and I knew it as soon as the words left my mouth. “Ike has a weird way of showing it, I’ll grant him that. But we’re both just concerned about you. We are your big brothers, after all.”

I just barely resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Since when had they ever acted like my big brothers? Being a band meant treating each other as equals, ignoring the fact that I was too young for the parties they drug me to, too young to understand some of the decisions we made as a unit. But now Taylor wanted to pull the big brother card, when nothing at all was wrong—at least, nothing he needed to concern himself with now.

“Yeah, yeah,” I replied, heaving an exaggerated fake sigh as though I were used to this sort of speech from Taylor. I picked up a quarter of turkey sandwich from the table. “If I eat this so I don’t die from The Crud or whatever, will you lay off?”

“You could eat the whole damn turkey and it wouldn’t make a difference,” Taylor replied. “But if you eat that right now, then yes, I’ll leave you alone. For now.”

I hated myself for trying to strike a bargain with him. I had already eaten my fill of carrots and broccoli. That should have been enough. Left to my own devices, that would have been my only meal until the concert that night, but Taylor didn’t need to know that. But if I didn’t eat the sandwich, however insubstantial it was, he would know that much. Trying to hide my anger, I ripped off a large bite of the sandwich, doing my best to ignore how bland and awful it tasted.

“Happy now?” I asked, mouth full of turkey, cheese and white bread.

“I’m getting there,” Taylor replied, but his crossed arms and narrowed eyes said otherwise. “You eat a few more of those while I go try to smooth things over with Ike.”

I mumbled something that he was free to interpret as agreement, but it really wasn’t. It took all the strength I had just to swallow the first few bites of that sandwich. There was no way I could eat a few more.

Once Taylor was gone, I rushed to the small bathroom to the side of our little green room. No one else was around, but I locked the door and turned on the fan just in case. No one needed to hear what I was about to do.

I hated this, but sometimes it was necessary. Sticking my fingers down my throat wasn’t something I did often, and I still wasn’t very good at it. No one really _wants_ to throw up, after all. When that feeling kicks in, it’s only natural to fight it.

After several tries, I gave a horrible cough, but nothing came with it. I knew the food hadn’t had long enough to digest, so what was the problem? I tried again, and that time the coughing fit made my vision blur and fade to black. And still… nothing.

This what my punishment for letting my brothers bully me into eating. That was all there was to it. I had let them get to me, and now I was stuck with the calories I had consumed to appease them. Next time I would have to be stronger. They were already asking too many questions, but I couldn’t let their questions force me into eating more and undoing the progress I had made. I would have to find some better way to lie and cover my tracks, or everything I had worked so hard for would be ruined.


	16. Chapter 16

With Isaac still recovering from his illness and most of our crew now infected with it, I was sure that his birthday would be a more sedated occasion this year. I was wrong. In spite of the fact that our bus had essentially become a rolling quarantine unit, no one even seemed to question the fact that there would be a party on Ike’s birthday, which coincided with the end of the tour in California.

The party was, like most parties, not really my scene at all. There was at least a small grouping of stoners in one corner, and that was good. I had been popping those diet pills like Tic Tacs all day and I was feeling it. My foot wouldn’t stop tapping against the floor, and soon enough, my whole leg was shaking. I put my hand on my knee to hold it down, but it didn’t help. A little pot was exactly what I needed to level myself back out.

With both drugs in my system, I had to find a place to focus my energy, and that place ended up being Carrick’s meager selection of video games. By that point, I didn’t really care whether I liked the games or not, and it didn’t even matter that no one else seemed interested in playing with me. The fact that I was kicking all of their asses was probably why they kept dropping like flies. Who needed these random California boys I didn’t even know, anyway?

My brothers could easily find a crowd to hang out with, adapt themselves to any group they found their way into, but it didn’t come so easily for me. I could bluff my way out of a lot of situations, but I never stuck around for very long. I was better at keeping people at arms length rather than developing even a surface level connection with them. Sometimes I envied my brothers in that way, but most of the time I didn’t. Knowing them the way I did, it only made them seem superficial to watch how they could drift in and out of different personalities, adapting themselves to suit their purposes in that moment.

At the current moment, Isaac was surrounded by women, which I was sure was exactly where he wanted to be. It was a good thing he didn’t have a jealous wife, but it was also a good thing that he was no more than just a big flirt. Once upon a time he might have gone farther than just cracking jokes and refilling everyone’s drinks, but he was hopelessly devoted to Nikki now.

And Taylor… well, I had no clue where Taylor was. Until a body flopped down on the couch next to me and I recognized the flash of blonde hair attached to it.

“Hey, Zac,” he slurred. I had to blink at him a few times to bring him into focus, but even when I did, he still seemed a bit fuzzy around the edges.

“Hey,” I replied. Raising an eyebrow at his disheveled appearance, I asked, “Enjoying the party?”

“Mhm.” Taylor gave an exaggerated nod. “Are you?”

“As much as I enjoy any party,” I admitted.

Taylor gave me a sad pout, then said, “You know, I’m sorry about the other day. Ike came down pretty hard on you, and I wasn’t much better. You didn’t really deserve that.”

“Maybe I did,” I replied, shrugging.

“No, I mean it,” Taylor said, and I almost laughed at his drunken earnestness. “You have every right to be tired, stressed out, whatever… you’re a new dad. Comes with the territory. We’re not trying to be mean when we worry that you’re not taking care of yourself, but… well, you know Ike. Sometimes it comes off mean anyway.”

That was true enough, at least. Even if Taylor’s reasoning as to why I’d been _off_ lately wasn’t really sound, I appreciated the thought. I doubted he would remember it in the sober light of day, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

“Thanks,” I choked out, the word seeming to get stuck in my throat. I sounded too sincere, like I really did have some reason to be upset with him. I didn’t like it. A joke was what I needed to lighten the mood. “You know I don’t really pay attention to either of you anyway.”

Taylor laughed, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. I wished I could ignore that, but once I saw it, I couldn’t. Was it because of me? Did Taylor see through me? I felt selfish for even asking myself that question. Why did I have to assume everything was about me? Maybe there was something going on in Taylor’s life. Maybe I should ask him. My mouth went dry at the very prospect of it. Not only selfish, but a coward, apparently.

“I’ll be right back,” I mumbled, but I think we both knew that I wouldn’t.

I had smoked too much, I decided. I was paranoid and crashing fast. It was a delicate balance, trying to get my mood just right. Right then, I decided another handful of pills was called for. I had been coerced into eating a big chunk of birthday cake earlier that evening, so really, I needed the pills for more than one reason.

The kitchen was teeming with people, most of them also on one substance or another. No one noticed the guy washing down amphetamines with rum and coke. It was almost too easy to get away with it, really, and I knew I _was_ getting away with something. No one cared about the pot or the alcohol, but there were lines I knew weren’t supposed to be crossed. I didn’t care, though. I needed this. No one would understand it, but at times like these, surrounded by all the temptations anyone could want, it was hard not to feel like everyone was enabling me. Maybe they knew I needed it, too.

The night became a blur then, but not in a bad way. It planted itself in my memory only in flashes—a joke here, a game of Wii bowling there and a long walk back to the hotel that somehow turned into a run.

I felt more alive than I had in months.

Isaac and Taylor just laughed at me as I skipped and jogged circles around them. This was the old me, at least in their eyes. Funny, ridiculous, absurd Zac. The class clown. The court jester. The funniest part of all was that you could get away with being the most depressed person in the room as long as you laughed the loudest. Who would ever question you if you were making them laugh? Who would ever think to doubt it? The guy who seemed more alive than anyone else couldn’t possibly want to die, could he?

The hotel night clerk eyed us angrily as we made our way inside, still laughing and even dancing. I didn’t care. I shot him a huge, shit-eating grin as I skipped by. I felt invincible. I felt like a child again.

I tapped my foot nervously as we took the elevator back to our floor. I could see Isaac and Taylor eyeing me, and I was sure they were wondering what my problem was. If they only knew. I had too much energy for the party to end now, but my brothers had apparently decided we should actually use those hotel rooms we had paid for, rather than stay up all night partying. Still, I wanted to keep going. When had I become such a party animal? I knew the answer to that, though.

Once the elevator stopped, I was off like a shot, even though all that awaited me was a lonely, empty hotel room. Maybe I needed another pill or two. No, that wouldn’t help. Another bowl might bring me down and help me sleep, but I wasn’t so sure that I was ready to come down.

“Zac?” Taylor called out from behind me. “I asked if you were alright.”

I spun around to face him and only slightly lost my balance, catching it with a palm planted against the wall. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” Taylor replied. “You just seem… are you drunk?”

“Are you?” I shot back.

“Yes.” Taylor nodded. “But you’re all… you’re all red. Are you hot? You look hot.”

“Are you hitting on me?” I asked. “I feel fine, Nurse Taylor. Maybe it’s my turn to get The Crud, but I’m fine.”

Taylor eyed me for a moment, his eyes crossing. He was definitely drunk, although I had to admit that I really wasn’t sober either. Now that Taylor mentioned it, I did feel a little warm, but I wasn’t too worried about it. I was pretty sure that was just a side effect of the pills.

“Well… alright,” Taylor said. “See ya tomorrow.”

It was a good thing he was so drunk, I decided. It kept him from being determined to get to the bottom of my problems. In seconds, he was distracted by some corny joke Isaac was telling, and I was able to make my escape. I scurried into my room before either of them could say anything else, and leaned against the closed door, breathing heavily like I had just run a marathon.

I took a few deep breaths, but they didn’t really help. My heart was racing, and the few steps it took to reach the bedside table where I had left a bottle water felt like a mile. I gulped down the rest of the bottle in just a few seconds, and tried to force myself to think.

Something was wrong. The rational voice in the back of my head that I had tried to drown out knew that, but I could barely hear it over my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I needed something. I needed to do something. But I couldn’t even begin to think of what.

Katie.

She would know what to do, I was sure of that. It was early in the morning in Oklahoma, but with a new baby, I doubted she would be asleep anyway.

It took a few tries to pull my phone from my pocket, and my vision blurred as I tried carefully to type a message. My fingers didn’t want to cooperate, but finally I managed to fire off a text to my wife.

 

_Long night out celebrating Ike’s bday. Everybody on the tour is sick and now everybody’s shitfaced too. Miss you. I know it’s early but I just miss you and I hope you’re not sleeping. Love you. Tell Shep I love him too._

 

With my message, pathetic as it was, sent, I collapsed onto the bed. My phone fell with a dull thud to the mattress beside me and I decided to leave it right there so I would hear when Kate texted back or called. With some effort, I managed to take off my shoes and fling them across the room. I was still burning up. The air was running at full blast, though. Growling, I struggled to free myself of my clothing, not stopping until I was down to nothing but my boxer briefs. That was better, but only slightly. The effort of that left me sweating, and I fell back to the mattress, not bothering to pull back the covers or even try to situate myself comfortably.

My last thought as everything faded to black was that it was still just too damn hot.


	17. Chapter 17

The next thing I knew was a steady, rhythmic beeping. My eyes opened slowly, and it took a moment for my brain to catch up and realize that I wasn’t in my hotel room. This room was even more sterile, plain white. A hospital room. It could barely even be considered a room; there were walls on three sides, but the fourth was open with only a curtain to hide me from what appeared to be a nurse’s desk. The curtain was halfway open, but no one looked my way and I was all alone in the little cubicle.

I tried to remember how I had gotten there, but my memory was a blur. I vaguely recalled Isaac shaking me awake while Taylor talked to someone else, someone I couldn’t hear—a 911 operator, I assumed. I remembered the wailing of ambulance sirens. I remembered nurses and doctors and ice packs. Anything else… was lost forever, having not planted itself firmly in my memory.

I didn’t like it. Normally I was a loner, but being alone right then made my heart race. I didn’t like it at all. I wanted to call my brothers or page a nurse or something, but my mouth felt impossibly dry and hands wouldn’t cooperate. After staring at them for a few seconds, I realized that my hands had been covered in gauze, secured with several layers of tape. That was odd. Not having the use of my fingers, I decided my best option was to bang my fuzzy, gauze-covered fists against the side of the bed. I didn’t care that I looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum if it got somebody’s attention.

A large, confused looking male nurse scurried into the room and blinked at me. “Oh. We’re awake now. Are we feeling a little more like ourselves?”

“If you’re asking whether or not _I_ feel _sober_ , then yes.”

“Fantastic,” he deadpanned, obviously not amused that I didn’t like his bedside manner. “Doctor Robbins will be in to see you soon. And if you promise not rip out any more IVs, we can get your hands unwrapped.”

So _that_ was why my hands were bandaged. It was actually fucking hilarious, but I didn’t think Nurse Ratchet would appreciate it if I laughed. That would probably be a one way ticket to the psych ward, in fact.

Staring him down, I replied, “Let’s get right on that.”

A few moments later, my hands were unwrapped and I could see the damage. There would be several nasty bruises there, as I apparently hadn’t been all too keen on having blood taken or fluids administered. The nurse was all too happy to show me the spot where they’d eventually resorted to sticking my foot; I vaguely wondered what they had done with my shoes… not to mention my pants.

According to the clock on the wall, it was exactly seven minutes before the doctor pushed my curtain aside and stepped into the room.

“Hello, Zachary,” he said.

“Zac.”

“Zac.” He smiled. That smile remained as he plucked the chart from the end of my bed and flipped through it. Someday, I wanted to look at one of those charts and see what was so damn interesting about them. “Well, the good news is, you should be able to leave us soon. Looks like your temperature is back to normal and everything else looks fine. It was, overall, a fairly mild overdose.”

Overdose. The word echoed in my mind. Was I really capable of something like that?

“I know you probably don’t remember much from earlier this morning,” Doctor Robbins continued.

I shook my head. The lump that had suddenly appeared my throat prevented speech entirely.

“You brothers brought you in this morning. You had a very high fever—probably from the drugs and the bug that I understand has been going around your crew--and they saw proof of emesis on your hotel bed. We gave you some Lorazapam to stop the vomiting and help you sleep, but mostly we’ve been trying to get that fever down and get you re-hydrated. According to your brothers, you’re not a regular amphetamine user, and you don’t show any signs of long term use, so you should be good to go in a few hours after we’ve monitored you a bit more.”

“You… you told my brothers?” I asked, sounding like a pathetic little child.

The doctor nodded. “In the absence of your wife, your brother—Taylor, I think it was—acted as your next of kin. He admitted you were all at a party last night where many people were using drugs and alcohol.”

“That’s true,” I managed to squeak out.

Doctor Robbins took a few steps closer to my bed. “Zachary—Zac. I’m not here to lecture you about drugs. The marijuana we found in your system likely did contribute to the dehydration, but study after study shows that on its own, it really isn’t harmful, aside from of course the damage caused by any smoke inhalation. The amphetamines—actually, we found a synthetic form in your system--are a bit more alarming; I’m not the police, so you’re not going to get in trouble, but I am curious why someone as young and healthy as you would be taking that sort of drug.”

“They were… I thought they were just for energy. Like diet pills or something. I mean, you can buy them over the counter, like a dietary supplement or whatever.”

“You can,” he replied, nodding. “But that doesn’t mean you should. The dosage can vary, the instructions are poor and it’s far too easy to have a negative reaction to them.”

“Obviously,” I replied weakly.

“This is probably the sort of thing you should discuss with your regular doctor, if you feel like you need those sort of medications. He can provide a safer, prescription or find some other way to treat any underlying problems. My concern here is just to get you out of here safely, and I think we can do that soon enough.”

I nodded. Thank god for these hippie California doctors, I decided, as he checked over my vitals before bidding me goodbye for the next hour. I was sure my lies were pretty weak, but he really didn’t seem to care at all about my potential drug habits.

Did I really have a drug habit? Was it really possible I was an addict?

It seemed impossible, and yet I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the pills I kept buying were dangerous. I wasn’t stupid. I knew what they contained, and I knew what they could do for me. I craved that. Those little pills gave me the boost I needed to get myself into shape. But… addicted? No. I felt it down to my bones, but the craving wasn’t truly physical.

As I stared up at the ceiling, though, a thought occurred to me. Doctor Robbins hadn’t said a single word about my weight. He knew why I was taking the pills, and I was sure my weight—one thirty six the last time I checked--was recorded on that chart that interested him so. Yet he hadn’t said a word about it. That meant he must not have seen it as a problem—neither overweight nor underweight. And yet my brothers were so concerned. Well, I trusted a doctor’s opinion over theirs, and if this doctor didn’t think I was too thin, then I hadn’t lost too much. I still had progress to make.

Those thoughts were interrupted by another hand pushing back the curtain to my room. I wasn’t sure who I expected to see, but my heart dropped when Taylor appeared, taking a few cautious steps into the room.

“At least you’re awake now,” he said softly, but the words still sounded like something of an accuasation.

“Apparently,” I replied. There was no fight in me, but I still couldn’t be anything other than my usual sarcastic self.

Taylor sank down into one of the small room’s two chairs, clutching his coffee tightly but not drinking it. “You’re going to get a hell of a lecture later from Isaac, you know. And I don’t even want to think about what your wife is going to say.”

“Neither do I,” I replied, although until that very moment I hadn’t thought about it at all. What would Katie say? Hadn’t I been talking to her before…? My memory was hazy, but I distinctly remembered the feeling that I needed to her.

“She’s the reason you’re here at all,” Taylor said, seeming to read my mind. “I mean, in the hospital. Or maybe here at all, I don’t know. She called me when you didn’t answer her call; she said your text was strange and it worried her. It just didn’t sound like you, she said. It’s a good thing she’s got that instinct about you, huh?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m a really lucky guy.”

“You’re a really _stupid_ guy,” Taylor said. “I mean, what the hell, Zac? Am-amphetamines?”

“God, it’s not like I’m an addict or something,” I replied, trying to sound dismissive enough to also sound innocent. It was the truth, after all, but I knew the rest of my explanation couldn’t be. “There was this guy at the party with some Adderall or whatever. Said it went well with pot. Obviously… it doesn’t.”

“I’ll say,” Taylor replied softly. He took a sip of his coffee and stared off at the blank wall. “I guess I can’t really lecture you about this, though, can I?”

“Save that for the ones who wouldn’t be hypocrites if they did,” I said, my tone as light as I could manage, which really wasn’t very light at all.

Taylor shook his head. “You really don’t know how lucky you are right now. Lucky we don’t have any more concerts left. Lucky that I’m the one who somehow got stuck with dealing with you today. And lucky I’m not going to rat you out to anyone else.”

I stared at him blankly. Rat me out? What was that supposed to mean? What could he possibly rat me out for… unless he meant the pills.

“I’m taking your word for this, Zac,” Taylor said, leaning forward and giving me a serious look. “If this was really an accident, just a total, freak accident, then I’ll leave it up to you to tell or not tell whoever you want the truth. I’m not going to tell anyone what the doctor told me, because it’s not my place. But you’ve got to promise me this was a one time thing.”

“It was,” I replied, the lie falling easily off my tongue. But was it really a lie? The overdose would, if I had anything to say about it, be a one time thing. I made a mistake—too many pills, too little water. I would be safer next time. Of course, I knew that wasn’t really what Taylor was asking, but if I pretended, it made it easier to sound convincing.

“Okay,” Taylor said. “Don’t fuck this up, alright? It’ll be my ass on the line if you do, and I can’t handle that. Not even seeing you get stabbed a dozen times will make that worth it.”

I let out a hoarse laugh and held up my bruised hand. “You have to admit, though—if you’re going to get poked with a billion needles, being fucked up at the time is really the way to go.”

Taylor returned my laugh, but his was weak. He could relate, I was sure, but it wasn’t something you wanted to relate to. I supposed that was why he was willing to cover for me, even if he didn’t realize just how much he was helping me to hide.

“Alright,” Taylor said, standing up. “I’m going to go try to smooth things over with Ike a little. Give me a call when they give you the okay to get out of here. And call your wife; she’s probably worried herself to death by now.”

“Okay. Thanks, Tay.”

He gave me a small nod, but didn’t speak again before walking out of the room, coffee still clutched tightly in his hand.

My wife… I could only imagine what she would have to say about this. Could I lie to her as easily as I had to Taylor? I wasn’t so sure. A part of me didn’t want to call her at all, but I knew Taylor was right. As if on cue, my phone buzzed and I traced the sound back to a pile of clothing in the other chair. I couldn’t reach them from where I was, and I didn’t quite trust myself to stand up just yet. It was awful of me, but I decided that whoever it was—most likely Kate--would have to wait.

I laid my head back against the stiff hospital pillow and let my eyes fall shut. At least I could get a little bit of rest before I was turned loose and forced back into the world. The world would have questions for me and I didn’t have any good answers. At least, not any truthful ones. I didn’t have the energy for the world right then. All I wanted was to sleep, and so that was exactly what I did.


	18. Chapter 18

A few short hours later, most of which I spent napping when I wasn’t being poked and prodded by doctors and nurses, I was finally released from the hospital. I had been so out of it, isolated in that little room, that I was surprised to realize it was only early afternoon. When the nurse came in with my release paperwork, she pulled back the curtains I hadn’t even noticed and let the bright sunlight into the room. I didn’t like it at all, and it only made me happier to be leaving.

It took several minutes to struggle back into my clothing, and I was glad no one was around to see how much trouble I was having doing something as basic as putting on my own damn pants. My hands shook and I felt like I really _had_ come down with The Crud. I was sure that was some sort of retribution for using it to cover my ass.

My phone and wallet were sitting to the side of my neatly folded clothes. I dreaded looking at my phone to see just how many missed calls, texts and voicemails I had, but I knew I couldn’t delay forever. I wiggled my stiff fingers, heaved a sigh and picked up the phone. The screen was littered with messages, all from Kate, and I selected a random one to call her number back.

The phone only managed half a ring before Kate answered, breathlessly. “Hello?”

“Hey, Katie,” I said, trying to sound even more pathetic than I felt. I had a feeling I would need all the sympathy I could get to win her forgiveness.

“You sound horrible,” she said. “And you’re in big trouble. I don’t remember the last time I was that worried about you, if ever. What the hell, Zac?”

It was rare for Kate to curse, so I knew she really was upset. While I knew lying to her wasn’t my best course of action, I also knew that the stories I had told the doctor and Taylor wouldn’t work, either. With a soft sigh, I replied, “I really don’t know what happened. I guess the party was a bit too much for me, and it was finally my turn to catch what everyone else on the tour has already had.”

“So were you drunk or sick?” Kate asked, sounding a bit skeptical.

“Sick, mostly, but the alcohol made it worse,” I replied. “They had me hooked up to fluids; I was really dehydrated and feverish. I’m still all shaky, but supposedly they’re letting me leave.”

Kate heaved a big sigh. “You need to take better care of yourself. You know you never do on tour. You don’t eat enough, you stay out too late, you drive yourself into the ground. You’re all like that, but at least you don’t drink and smoke the way your brothers do.”

“I know, Katie,” I replied. “I know. But hey, at least I get to come home tomorrow. You can keep me under your watch for the next two months.”

“I plan to,” she said, and there was something of a teasing tone to her voice. That meant I had escaped the worst of her wrath, at least for the time being.

“I’ll be in good shape with Doctor Kate watching over me,” I said softly.

“I hope so,” she replied. “But I also hope you know you’re not off the hook for good. If you ever pull anything like this again, I’ll be the one to put you in the hospital and make sure you stay there.”

“I know, babe. But you know this was just a freak accident, right? Like you said, I pushed myself too hard and it got the best of me. I should have been able to see it coming, I guess, but it hit me too quickly. I didn’t even feel _that_ bad when I texted you and then laid down. And by the way, I am sorry I wasn’t awake to answer you.” There was nothing technically false in what I had said, but there was a lot left out. It still left a lump in my throat to tell that many lies, though.

“Well, let’s just be glad that it worried me enough to make me call Taylor, or… or god knows where you would be right now. Maybe somewhere worse than the hospital.”

“I don’t think it was that bad,” I replied softly, even though I knew she was right. “I mean, they’re letting me go and the doctor says I’m fine now. Not one hundred percent, but good enough to take care of myself from here on out. Give me a day or two back home with you and I’ll be back to normal.”

“From where I’m sitting, it seemed pretty bad.” Kate took a shaky breath, and I could tell she was trying to compose herself. “But I am glad you’ll be home soon. Can you hurry up?”

I laughed softly. “I’ll see what I can do. Now I’m gonna get myself officially checked out of here and back to the hotel where I can really rest, without nurses bugging me all the time. I’ll call you again tonight, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied. “Talk to you later. Love you.”

“Love you, too. Bye.”

With a still shaking hand, I stuffed my phone into one pocket and my wallet into the other. I grabbed my paperwork from where I had tossed it onto the bed, and decided there was no point delaying things any further. If I stuck around much longer, I was afraid I would never be able to wash off the hospital smell. It felt like it had embedded itself permanently in my skin, and the beeping of various medical machinery echoed in my brain.

Whether it was a freak accident or not, it was definitely not an experience I was keen to repeat.

It took only a few minutes to drop off the paperwork to a very disinterested nurse, and a few more texts to Taylor to figure out at which exit he and Isaac were waiting for me. Finally, I located them standing next to a yellow taxi. Isaac looked disinterested, while Taylor didn’t look at all like he was keeping a horrible secret for me. That was good. That was exactly how I wanted him to look. Maybe he really had bought my story and didn’t think anything was wrong at all.

“Well, you look like shit,” Isaac said.

“Thanks, you too.” I punctuated the statement with a raised middle finger and a smile.

Isaac turned to Taylor. “He can’t be too sick if he’s back to his usual sunny disposition.”

“Can we not argue right now?” Taylor heaved a sigh. “Let’s just get back to the hotel. I think we’ll all feel a lot better if we just get some rest.”

“Alright, alright.” Isaac held his hands up in defeat and climbed into the cab.

Taylor motioned for me to climb in next, which left me sandwiched between the two of them. Physically, it wasn’t as comfortable as I thought it might have been, but it was still reminiscent of being caught in a vice. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold up under that sort of pressure.

“Hey,” Isaac called out. “Can we stop at an In and Out? Surely there’s one nearby. Get some burgers to take back to the hotel with us.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Taylor replied.

“Sure thing,” said the cab driver.

“Did they even feed you in the hospital at all?” Isaac asked.

“No,” I replied. “Well, nothing that can really be considered food.”

“Then we definitely need to get some burgers into you. Several of them.” As if to prove his point, he slapped my stomach with the back of his hand.

I didn’t speak. There was a distinct possibility that if I opened my mouth at all, I would just be sick all over the cab, and no one wanted that. There was no way I could eat that sort of greasy food. It was possibly the last thing I needed right then, but I knew it was a sort of test. If I didn’t eat in front of Isaac, it would be proof positive to him of whatever it was he suspected me of doing. He was calling my bluff, and there was nothing I could do but choke down some burgers and fries.

Only a moment later, we had pulled into a drive through and the cabbie had rolled down the back window so that Taylor could place our order. I let him order for me, not caring at all what he chose. It would all tastes the same—horrible.

The smell of hamburger meat filled the cab and I longed for a window seat so I could at least let the breeze in and perhaps keep myself from suffocating. No such luck, though. Instead, I was stuck holding a bag with two animal style burgers, fries and a chocolate shake. It wasn’t what I would have ordered for myself, but it was what I ended up with, and I knew I was in no condition to be picky. I could feel my brothers’ eyes boring into me—even Taylor—and so I did the only thing I could.

I pulled out a burger and took one huge bite. I immediately regretted it, but I hoped they didn’t see the way I gagged as I forced it down. Somehow, miraculously, I swallowed it. And then I took another bite. And another. Only pausing for sips of my shake and a fry or two, I demolished the first burger in what felt like record time. I felt like a bottomless pit, like a hunger I had never known had been awoken in me. A part of me wanted to scream, to try to find some way to make it stop, but all I did was reach into the bag for the second burger.

I realized, when we arrived at the hotel, that neither of my brothers had so much as touched their food, and yet I was scraping the bottom of my fries and still feeling like I could eat more. Maybe Isaac was right; I did need to get some food in my system. But as it settled in and I realized what a pig I had been, I wanted nothing more than to get it out of my system.

After chipping in my share of the cab fare, I rushed into the hotel and to my room. Without even thinking about what I was doing, working on instinct alone, I scurried to the bathroom. Even with as little practice as I had, it took only a few tries, shoving my finger down my throat, to be successful. It was miserable, but all too easy. I hated how easy it was. The restraint it took to just not eat and the discipline it took to exercise off what I did eat… those things weren’t easy. Throwing up was easy. But there was no doubt that you were fucked up if you stuck your fingers down your throat. It took a level of a delusion not even I could reach to rationalize that, and so I tried to avoid it as much as possible.

Right then, I couldn’t avoid it. I saw no other option but to be right there on my knees on the tile, stomach cramping as my dinner made its second appearance in only a matter of minutes.

By the time I had finished, my throat was burning. I filled one of the hotel’s plastic cups with water and took a hesitant sip, but even that burned. I poured the water out and walked back into the bedroom. The In and Out bag was sitting on the dresser, taunting me. I picked it and the milkshake up and tossed them into the trash before I could give in and eat or drink any more. Just to be on the safe side, I picked up every random piece of trash lying around the room and stuffed those on top of the bag and cup. 

With that temptation removed, I pulled my phone from my pocket and texted Kate. I didn’t trust myself to talk to her then, not with the evidence of what I had done still right there in my raw, burning throat. That voice would reveal all of my lies for exactly what they were, I was sure. Better not to speak at all.


	19. Chapter 19

In spite of her somewhat joking promises to make sure to take care of me and nurse me back to full health, there wasn’t much Kate could do. Our tour carried on right up to Thanksgiving, arriving back in Tulsa earlier that week. There was just too much to do to get ready for the holiday, which was as massive of a celebration in the Hanson family as Christmas, if not even more so. Taking care of husbands who insisted they weren’t sick wasn’t as high up on Kate’s to do list as I knew she wished it could be.

I knew that bothered her, but it left me with time to myself and no one really monitoring what I did or didn’t do. Kate had already started her Christmas shopping, which was a process I was largely left out of, and so I spent my days at home with Shepherd, finally having the time to really get to know my son. And if I broke out some of Kate’s exercise videos while Shep was napping and she was at the mall, who was there to judge me?

Thanksgiving day itself came all too soon, and I didn’t feel prepared at all. I had dropped another three pounds, bringing me down to one thirty three, since coming home from the tour. I had a feeling the extreme dehydration had something to do with that loss, and so I wasn’t sitting back and enjoying it. I knew I had to keep working to keep the weight off, and a Hanson family Thanksgiving dinner wasn’t going to help with that at all.

Luckily, the weather that day was mild enough for the men of the family to indulge in our traditional football game while the women slaved away in the kitchen. It wasn’t the most evolved of traditions, really, and since getting married and learning how to cook, Taylor usually begged off from the game early on and joined the women anyway. That was just as well, since he was inevitably the weakest player—out of an entire field of weak players—on whichever team got stuck with him any given year. The sport was good for me, too, because I knew I needed something to offset all the calories I would be forced to eat. Even though she encouraged me to work out with her, even taking me to one of her Zumba classes, Kate also hounded me to make sure I was eating whatever healthy fad food she had cooked. She would definitely keep a close watch on me when the turkey and stuffing was passed around.

When the game finally broke up, all of us sucking so much we couldn’t even attempt to declare a winner, I headed into the pool house to take a shower and change into the khakis and button-down shirt Kate had picked out for me. The hot water was a shock to my system compared to the cool sweat that had collected on my body during the game, and I wished I could just stay in there all night. I knew I couldn’t though; it was nearly time for dinner and I didn’t want to draw any extra attention to myself by being late.

With that thought in mind, I hurried to finish showering, toweled off my hair and pulled it back into a ponytail. My shirt was a little wrinkled and didn’t want to stay tucked into the khakis that were nearly falling down my hips, but at least I had a belt to keep the pants up. With all the food that filled our house, I doubted I would be the only guy there with an untucked shirt before the night was over. I didn’t look great, but under the circumstances, it was the best I could manage.

I walked out of the bathroom and jumped a bit when I realized that I wasn’t alone. Avery was sitting on the couch, staring off into the distance.

“Hiding from the family?” I asked.

“Something like that,” she replied, giving me a hint of a smirk. Her eyes moved up and down my body and she sighed. “What about you?”

“Just getting ready to start the festivities, I guess. Wanna head back to the main house with me?”

“I think maybe we should talk first,” she said.

There was something serious in her tone, and I didn’t like that. What could we have to talk about? Avery was always good about being tuned in to my moods, but even she couldn’t tell _all_ of my secrets, could she?

“Okay,” I replied, sitting down on the couch next to her. I didn’t want to talk, but I could tell by her tone of voice and the way she looked at me that I wasn’t going to have a choice. Maybe I didn’t want to talk, but it seemed that she did.

She continued staring off into the distance for a moment, and I started to wonder if she was going to speak at all. Maybe she expected me to start, but I had no idea what this conversation was supposed to be about. Finally, Avery looked back at me. “I’m worried about you, Zac.”

“Worried?” I echoed, furrowing my eyebrows. Why was she worried? Sure, I could think of a few reasons, but none that she could know.

“You’re so skinny lately,” she said. “You’re wasting away.”

“Please,” I replied, grabbing my stomach and pinching. It was harder than it used to be, but sitting down, I still had a small roll to help prove my point that I wasn’t all that thin.

“I can practically count your ribs from here,” Avery said, her eyes narrowing. “I’m not surprised that you don’t see it, but the rest of us do. You’re losing way too much weight, and you’ve lost it way too quickly.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked, even though it was obvious.

“I’m saying I really don’t think this is healthy,” Avery replied. “I think… I don’t know what you’re doing or how you’re doing it, so I’m not going to say—I’m not going to diagnose you here. I’m not a doctor, a psychiatrist, whatever. I just know that this doesn’t look good, Zac. It scares me. And if it scares me, and I don’t even get to spend that much time with you, then I can only imagine what everyone else sees and what they think.”

“No one else has said anything,” I replied, even though I knew it was a lie. Isaac was always making snide little comments, but I had come to accept that as proof that I was losing weight. It was annoying, yes, but I was obviously doing a good job if he thought I needed to eat more. I had come to see it as his twisted way of congratulating me on my weight loss.

“I doubt that,” Avery mumbled. “But even if they haven’t, they’re probably just too caught up in their own problems. Maybe it’s because I don’t see you every day that I can see the difference so clearly. To everyone else, it’s more gradual. But I see you here and I think back to the last time I saw you—and you were barely eating even then—and you’re so, so much skinnier. I don’t know how anyone else could miss it, but obviously they have.”

“People see what they want to see,” I replied.

“And you think that doesn’t apply to you, too?” Avery shot back. “I mean, look at you. You don’t see how scary skinny you are, how you’re disappearing in front of our eyes when you didn’t even need to lose weight to begin with, and you don’t see anyone else’s problems, either! You just see this imagined problem with yourself, and you don’t ask anyone else what they’re going through. You’re not the only one hurting here, Zac.”

“I know I’m not. I never said I was.” She was right, though. Of course she was right. And with my younger siblings, who I rarely saw now that they were growing up and starting their own lives, I knew I had lost touch even more. I knew it, but I was ashamed to hear someone put it into words.

“But you never ask anyone else how they’re doing, do you?” Avery asked. “We can all pretty clearly see how you’re doing, even if most of us are too scared to talk about it. But I bet you have no clue what’s going on in my life. We used to be so close, didn’t we? And now you have no clue.”

“Then tell me what I have no clue about,” I replied. “I’m listening. I really am.”

“Zac, I’m… I’m a lesbian.”

Her voice was so soft that I could have almost asked her to repeat herself, but I knew I had heard correctly. Statistically speaking, I supposed it wasn’t surprising. But statistics didn’t account for the fact that this was my little sister, my little Avie Baby, whose entire identity was different than what I had been lead to assume. And I had no clue. She was right. I really was clueless and stuck in my own world.

“Can you please say something?” Avery said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.

“What should I say?” I asked. “Did you expect me to disapprove or something? Because that kind of hurts, if you did. But I just… I didn’t know. That’s all. So I’m surprised. I just hope you’re happy.”

“I’m getting there,” she replied. “And I’m sorry, I should have known you would be okay with it. I don’t give you enough credit sometimes.”

“Nobody ever does,” I replied, giving her a little smile.

Avery let out a soft laugh that sounded a little more like a sob. I reached up and wiped away the few stray tears that had started to fall down her cheeks.

“None of that,” I said. “This is Thanksgiving. We can’t go in there crying and depressed and shit. This is a happy day, a good day, right?”

“Right,” she replied. “It is a good day. I came out to one person and he didn’t hate me for it.”

I wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I could never hate you for anything, Avie Baby.”

“I could hate you for still calling me that,” she replied teasingly.

“But you know that’s what you’re always gonna be. You just need to get used to it.” Adopting a more serious look, I added, “And while I don’t hit women, any girl who breaks your heart is still going to have me to answer to.”

“I’m not sure how intimidating that really is,” she replied. “But thank you. For… everything.”

“You’re welcome. Thank you for… for trusting me, I guess. I feel kinda honored to be the first person you’ve told. And as far as everything else goes, I’m sorry that I’m worrying you. I don’t want to worry people.”

“If you eat a big dinner and a massive slice of pumpkin pie, I’ll forgive you and I won’t worry so much, at least for right now.”

For anyone else, that might have been a hard bargain. But this was Avery, who had just trusted me with something that could get her shunned by certain members of our family. I couldn’t discount that by ignoring her concerns about me, however unfounded I thought they were.

“Deal,” I said. “Just promise me we won’t lose touch again, and if you ever need to talk to anyone… about—about girlfriend problems or whatever—just let me know.”

“I will,” she replied, standing up and holding out her hand to me. “Now come on, let’s go inside while there’s still food left and before they send out the search parties.”

I laughed but took her hand and stood up. I didn’t know if I would be physically able to eat the way Avery wanted to see me eat, but for her, I was willing to try. The effort would be enough, I hoped, and I hoped that it kept everyone else off my back, too. If Avery had noticed, it was only a matter of time before everyone else started to question me, too.


	20. Chapter 20

The weather turned cold a few days after Thanksgiving and it was almost unbearable. I couldn’t remember the last time Tulsa has been so chilly, although Kate jokingly assured me that if I had a little more meat on my bones, I would be just fine. Rather than binge eating and putting the weight back on, I settled for layering on my heaviest coat over two or three layers of shirts and wearing a scarf, gloves and a beanie whenever I left my warm, cozy home to go work at the studio.

The studio was barely warmer than outside, it seemed, but my brothers laughed at me when I tried to record still bundled up like an Eskimo. Still, my fingers seemed to freeze up and refuse to cooperate if I tried to play piano without them, so I ignored my brothers and carried on.

I ignored my phone, too, until the text message tone gave way to what I recognized as Kate’s ringtone. After three calls in under a minute, I knew whatever she was calling about must be important. I couldn’t imagine what could be so important about Christmas shopping at the mall, but I knew better than to keep ignoring her. I stretched my achy fingers and reached for my phone, hitting ‘answer’ just as it began to ring again.

“Hello?”

“Zac,” she said breathlessly. “We just got the hospital. I’ve been trying to call Taylor but he’s not answering. Nat’s, umm, Nat’s water broke at the mall and we rushed over here as fast as we could. We’re at Saint Francis, so if you could find Taylor and get him here as soon as possible, that would be really great.”

It took a moment for my brain to process her words, rushed and jumbled as they were, but once I did, I replied, “Yeah. I’ll, I’ll find him and we’ll be right there.”

“Thank you.”

The line clicked dead, and I wasn’t even upset that she hadn’t said goodbye. More important things were happening. I stood up and hurried out of the room, ignoring the way my bones protested the sudden movement; lately, I felt closer to sixty than my real age. While my bones popped and creaked, lodging their complaints about my quick movements, I peeked into each room of our studio before finally locating Taylor in front of his computer, eyes glazed over as he stared at the screen.

“Taylor. Hospital. Now.”

He blinked up at me in more utter confusion than I thought even Taylor was capable of.

“Your wife’s in labor and you didn’t answer your phone.”

“Oh,” he said, blinking more rapidly. He picked up his phone and made a face at it. “I guess I didn’t charge it.”

“You can plug it into my car, but let’s fucking _go_ ,” I said, motioning toward the front of the office.

Within minutes, we were speeding down the streets of Tulsa toward the hospital. Neither of us spoke during the drive. I didn’t have anything to say, but it seemed like Taylor should have. Then again, he had never seemed to react appropriately to his expanding family, his joy seeming exaggeratedly fake or not present at all. Right then, it was completely absent.

There wasn’t time to dwell on that, though. Finding a spot to park my car, locating the right entrance and finding a nurse who could direct us to Natalie were far more important. As soon as we walked into the hospital doors, Taylor swung into action, although he still seemed to be operating on auto-pilot. Still, he got us where we needed to be, and soon Kate’s tall, thin figure appeared around a corner.

“Katie,” I said, while Taylor branched off to speak to a man I assumed was Natalie’s doctor.

My wife’s head popped up suddenly, and I could see worry etched on her face. She looked like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders and being crushed under it, and I felt horrible for inadvertently putting her in that situation. When she saw me, though, her lips turned up in a smile. It was weak, but still a smile.

“I’m so glad you guys made it,” she said softly, reaching her hands out to me.

I took her hands in mine and squeezed them tightly. “Hey, it’s alright. I’m just sorry we couldn’t make it sooner. I drove as fast as I could.”

“It’s okay,” she replied. “Can we, umm, can we take a walk? There’s a machine with surprisingly good coffee just down the hall here.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said, wrapping an arm around her waist. Even as frail as I was lately, it felt like I could break her with just that one hand. We were both fading away, it seemed.

Neither of us spoke again until Kate was cradling a cappuccino in her hands. She blew on it gently, then took a small sip and finally looked at me again. “I don’t know what the doctor was telling Taylor, but it’s… it’s not going well. Nat was having pains all day but she swore it was nothing to worry about. I guess walking around the mall stressed her body out and sped things up. Now they’re saying her blood pressure is too high and they’ve got to get it down or they’ll have to do a Cesarean. God, I feel awful, walking around and shopping all day and not even thinking how much it could be hurting her.”

“You couldn’t have known,” I replied. “If she said the pains were no big deal, of course you were going to take her word for it. It’s her fourth kid; she should have been able to recognize what were no big deal and what were serious labor pains. If she couldn’t or wouldn’t tell, then how could you expect to know?”

Kate sighed. “I don’t know. But I hate it when you’re right.”

“Oh, let me have one or two,” I said, giving her a small smile.

“I suppose,” Kate said, but her own smile was short-lived. “It’s just… it just makes me think about a lot of stuff.”

“Like what?” I asked, but I could already guess. I didn’t feel like sharing, but I wasn’t exactly enjoying being back in the hospital so soon, even if I wasn’t a patient this time. I tried not to think about that, though, forcing myself to block out that trademark hospital smell and focus on what Kate was saying.

“Well, I think about how hard it was for us and how scared I was. The whole time, until he was in my arms, I was so scared that we weren’t going to make it. And I guess a part of me feels like this is our punishment, this is retribution somehow. For finally getting what I wanted, and for both of us wanting that perfect fairytale of having our babies at the same time. How silly and selfish is that? Trying to bend the world to our will, and this… this is what we get. Miscarriages and complications and… and… just, _everything_. I know things could be so much worse, though, so then I just feel awful for feeling sorry for myself because the perfect life I planned ended up just a bit left of center.”

“Everyone has dreams, Katie. Things they wish for, things they strive for. You shouldn’t feel guilty for that.” Somehow, even though I knew it was true, I felt like a hypocrite for saying it. Hadn’t I striven to have the perfect life with her, too? To be a perfect, flawless person?

“And you’re right again,” she said softly. “Can you just stop that already?”

“I’ll try,” I replied, chuckling softly. “But seriously, this isn’t like… it isn’t some zero sum game. I know maybe it goes against everything they say in church, but maybe there’s not a reason for things. Maybe some things just happen, whether you’re good or bad, whether you deserve them or you’re supposed to learn from them or whatever. Maybe they just happen and all you can do is… just survive. Just fight the urge to give up.”

“It’s hard to fight sometimes, isn’t it?” She asked, her voice cracking.

“It is,” I admitted, leaning my forehead against hers. “It’s hard as hell. But you and I… we’ve got reasons to fight, don’t we? More now than we used to.”

“Yeah,” she breathed out. “You’re batting three and oh now, you know.”

I gave her a peck on the lips. “All I know is that I want you to be happy. I want to take some of this pain away for you, because fuck what I just said, you don’t deserve it. You just don’t.”

“You don’t deserve any of yours, either,” she replied. “But you’re as stubborn as I am. You know we’ll just go on shouldering all that pain alone, when the whole point of being married ought to be to share your burdens.”

“If only sharing them would diminish them. But I’m afraid it would just pull us both under all that much faster.”

“Maybe so,” Kate replied softly. “Maybe so.”

I gave her another soft kiss, but it was quickly interrupted by the sound of footsteps. We both jumped back, Kate nearly losing her grip on her cappuccino in the process and a few drops splashing onto the floor. The footsteps abruptly stopped and Taylor appeared around the corner, leaning on the wall as though it were the only thing keeping him upright.

“They’re, umm, they’re taking her in to prep for the C-section now,” he breathed out. “I called Mom and Dad—and Pam, she’ll be here soon. You two can… you can stay or go or whatever you want to do. Mom said to call her if you want to pick up Shep so they don’t have to bring him here with them when they come with all of ours. God, I don’t know how I’m going to explain of this to them…”

“Why do you have to explain anything?” I asked.

Taylor stared at me blankly. “Because… because, god I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“The doctors will get it under control,” I replied, although I wasn’t sure I believed that. “Just tell them what they need to know—their new baby brother will be here soon.”

Taylor nodded. “Okay. Alright. Yeah, umm…. Alright. Go get some rest. You look awful. Not you, Kate.”

Kate laughed softly. “No, I’m sure I do. Let me just go say goodbye to Nat, if they’ll still let me, and then I think we should go. Call or text us as soon as you know anything, okay?”

“I will,” Taylor replied. “And I think if you hurry you can catch her before they take her back.”

Kate turned back to me and gave me a look that let me know our conversation wasn’t over yet. “I’ll be right back, okay? Just stay here.”

“Okay,” I replied.

She scurried off, her boots echoing against the tile. Once the sound had faded off into nothing, Taylor seemed to remember I was there and gave me a long hard look. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a nod. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know. It’s been a long day and it’s barely even lunch time. And I can’t even think about eating right now.”

“You need to,” I replied, feeling like the world’s biggest hypocrite, but knowing I was saying the right thing, whether I believed it or not. “Keep your energy up. It could be an even longer day before it’s over.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” he replied, then gave me another long, hard look. “Like I said, you get some rest. Try to take care of yourself, okay?”

“I will,” I replied, hoping he couldn’t tell it was a lie.

Rest sounded good, though. It seemed I spent every free hour sleeping, and still I was exhausted. And cold. The hospital was even chillier than the studio; as Taylor wandered away, I tightened my scarf and adjusted the hat that I hadn’t even taken off before coming inside.

As I waited for Kate to return, I could only hope that everything I had said was right. I was so full of optimism and reassurances for everyone else, but it all felt hollow. Where was the confidence that I would be okay? Why couldn’t a little bit of that remain for me? Instead, I just felt like I was staring into a black hole where the only bright spots were the wife and son I didn’t even feel like I deserved.


	21. Chapter 21

Christmas was practically a month long affair in our family, especially now that we all had families of our own to celebrate with. Isaac and Nikki had started a new tradition of hosting an ‘adults only’ party early in December. In theory, it allowed us all to get away from the kids and have a more adult sort of party; in reality, with so many newborn babies to be constantly checked on and nursing mothers who couldn’t drink, it didn’t really turn into that raucous of an event.

Still, it was a nice, quiet night for the six of us and a few of our friends. I should have been more excited about it than I was, I supposed, but it seemed that lately I didn’t get excited about anything. Even the twinkling lights and Christmas decorations we passed by on the drive couldn’t seem to make me smile, when normally I found myself filling with glee like a child during the holiday season. I tried to paste on a smile anyway as we arrived at Isaac and Nikki’s house with presents and sparking grape juice in tow.

The party was already in full swing when we arrived, if a group of adults sitting around playing card games and listening to Christmas carols could be considered full swing. There was some of that childlike glee about it, but at the same time, it wasn’t very exciting at all. When had we all become so boring? When we settled down and started having kids, I supposed. It was different when Taylor was the only one of us with children; he was something of a novelty. Now we were all in the same world of mortgages, diapers and all the tedium of daily life that I had thought being a rockstar would exclude us from.

“Come on,” Kate said, giving my arm a squeeze. “Let’s go say hi to Nat and Tay.” 

“Okay,” I replied.

I was surprised the two of them had even come to the party; Natalie had only just been released from the hospital after a long but ultimately successful birth. As we approached them, sitting alone in a corner of the living room, I could see that they still looked like they hadn’t slept in days. They probably hadn’t. Still, there was a small smile on Natalie’s face that almost hide the ordeal they had been through over the last few days.

“Hey you two,” Kate said. “I’m surprised you didn’t bring that little man with you.”

“I wanted to,” Natalie replied. “But this probably isn’t the best place for someone so little. Diana and Walker are watching him. And honestly, I’m ready to go home and sleep already.”

“I had to drag this one out of bed to get him here,” Kate said, giving me a nudge. “I swear, he sleeps more than the baby.”

“That’s a little bit of an exaggeration,” I replied, but it wasn’t really. I just didn’t have any energy these days.

Before Kate could contradict me, I felt a hard, but friendly, slap on my back. I turned my head and saw Isaac standing next to me.

“Glad to see you guys made it!” He said a little too loudly, and I could smell the alcohol fumes coming off of him. “Grab a beer, make yourself at home. Oh, and some of those sausage balls Nikki always makes. They’re the best.”

“I’m good,” I replied softly.

Isaac rolled his eyes. “Of course you are. Do you eat at all anymore?”

“Of course I eat,” I snapped. It was pointless and stupid to even answer him. I ate plenty, sometimes in horrible binges that left me feeling worse than before. But it didn’t matter what I said or didn’t say; Isaac would think whatever he wanted to think.

“Hey,” Kate said softly. “It’s okay. We’ll just get a little snack; we haven’t had dinner yet.”

I shook my head, but I knew I had lost the argument. If Kate was siding with Isaac, then there would be no escaping it. I would have to eat. I let her guide me to the kitchen, thankful to get away from the jokes about my appetite or lack thereof that I knew my brothers were still telling.

The kitchen was filled with food and the smell of it was like an assault on my senses. I headed straight to the cooler on the floor and grabbed a bottle of cider, while Kate surveyed what food was available. She picked up a plate and began filling it with dainty little portions of everything available.

“Do you want a plate, too?” She asked. “There are still plenty of those sausage balls left.”

I shook my head. “Maybe in a little bit, but not right now.”

Kate nodded, pursing her lips. I knew she understood, at least on some level, that I just couldn’t eat, and she rarely pushed that hard. “Well, how about some broccoli salad? I think the dressing is just oil, so it’s still healthy enough.”

“Just a little serving. One of the small plates,” I replied, heaving a sigh.

It was just broccoli, I reminded myself. A vegetable. Vegetables were good. Cider was good, too, I decided, and took another large swig from the bottle. Somehow, I had already drained it halfway, just in the course of this small negotiation over what to eat. I grabbed another bottle as Kate filled the plate and handed it to me, and I just barely managed to give her a smile and a thank you. I really was grateful that she wasn’t pushing the issue any further.

We made our way back into the living room with our food and drinks, and I resisted the urge to make a huge show to Isaac of the fact that I was eating. I was sure he would just make some joke about how I was turning into a vegetarian. A part of me wished I had just stayed in the kitchen; it was easier to eat if no one was watching to judge how much or how little.

The cider made me feel warm inside for the first time in what seemed like weeks, though, and by the time I had finished the second one, I was feeling a little fuzzy, too. I supposed that was a pleasant side effect of not eating much—it turned me into a really cheap drunk. That didn’t stop me from drinking more and more, though, until the whole room was spinning.

“Well, someone’s in a good mood for once,” Isaac said, grabbing my bottle to stop me from tipping it over as I leaned in to look at Kate’s Uno cards. She had joined a game with a few of the other women after finishing her little meal, while I found myself drifting around the fringes of the party, getting progressively closer to shitfaced.

“I’m always in a good mood,” I slurred, the words sticking on the back of my tongue.

“Just leave it,” Kate said softly, pulling the card I’d pointed to and putting it in the table.

“I’m leaving it. I have left it,” I replied. “He’s the one who keeps picking it back up.”

“Maybe if you’d eat a little something more often, you’d stay in a good mood.”

My only response was to glare at Isaac. Why did it always come back to the food thing? He was more obsessed with what I ate or didn’t eat than I was. And unlike Avery’s misguided concern, Isaac only offered condemnation. Why did he want me to eat? Did he _want_ me to gain weight?

“What did you eat?” Isaac asked. “One carrot stick?”

“And washed it down with half your alcohol, from the looks of things,” Taylor remarked, and I hadn’t even noticed he was paying attention the this conversation at all.

In fact, I realized, the entire room had gone quiet, everyone watching this strange and pointless confrontation. I hated being the center of attention, especially when the conversation centered around my weight. I didn’t need more people thinking about or talking about my body. I already knew what it looked like; their opinions were unnecessary.

I set my cider bottle down on the card table with a decisive thump and turned to leave. I couldn’t handle all their eyes on me, and all of the alcohol seemed ready to make a second appearance anyway. Before anyone could stop me, I had run to the bathroom and locked the door behind me. My knees hit the tile with an awful crunch and I crawled to the toilet from where I had landed just inside the door.

I hated this. I hated the way everyone was starting to see it and starting to talk about it. I was finally close to where I wanted to be, so near to perfect that I could almost taste it, and no one wanted me to get there. Hadn’t they all joked about my weight before? Now they hated that I had lost it. It didn’t make sense at all. There was nothing I could do to please them.

Was I doing this to please them, though? I didn’t think so. It just seemed like it would be a nice bonus. But it was becoming apparent that I would always be out of step with everyone else and never good enough no matter what I did. All I could do was to try please myself and be the person I wanted to be, yet somehow even that seemed so elusive, so out of my grasp.

At least my overindulgence in alcohol meant that I didn’t have to force myself to vomit. That happened all on its own, the one thing that had gone right the whole night. Still, there was little to come out but the alcohol itself, which burned just as much as it had going down. My retching quickly turned to sobbing, whether from pain, emotions or both, I really couldn’t say.

“Zac?” Kate’s soft voice just barely carried through the door and the awful sounds I was making that I really hoped no one else at the party could hear. “Is everything okay in there?”

“No,” I replied honestly, the sentence punctuated by a painful hiccup.

“Is it too bad for you to unlock the door and let me in?”

“Probably.” I sighed and flushed the evidence down the toilet. “But I’ll do it anyway, I guess.”

I scrambled to the door and unlocked it, but didn’t bother to stand the rest of the way up. Instead, I sank back against the wall as Kate opened the door just far enough to let herself in. That far down the hallway, I couldn’t see the rest of the party at all, and I was thankful for that.

Kate sat down in front of me, cross-legged on the tile. “So what’s going on? You really were chugging those drinks pretty fast, weren’t you?”

“I guess so,” I replied, staring at the floor.

“I’m not going to tell you that you should have eaten more.”

I sighed. “But I should have.”

Kate didn’t acknowledge that, but I knew it was what she wanted to say. I couldn’t say that I agreed, but I supposed if I had filled my stomach up with a little more food, all that alcohol might have settled better and I wouldn’t have made a laughingstock of myself at the annual adult Christmas party. There were a lot of little things I could have done differently, but it was too late to dwell on them.

“Can we go home?” I asked weakly.

“I already told everyone that we were,” Kate replied. “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll leave. It’s okay. The party was kind of a bust this year anyway, brotherly arguments aside.”

“I’m sorry I ruined it,” I mumbled.

“You didn’t ruin it, baby,” Kate said. “Everything will be better in the morning, once we’ve all gotten some rest and you’ve gotten over the hangover you’re probably going to have.”

I groaned. The thought of getting through the next five minutes was hard enough; I couldn’t fathom the next morning at all. But I knew that in the great scheme of things, it was minuscule. It was one small task I could accomplish, especially with Kate by my side.

She offered me her hand and I took it readily, letting her pull me to my feet. Her strength surprised me, or maybe it was my weakness. Maybe both. On shaky feet, I let her walk me out of the bathroom and hung my head as she made our goodbyes. The party had mostly broken up anyway, and I knew that no matter what Kate said, it was partially my fault.

Once again, I had made a mess of everything when all I wanted to do was get everything right. But at least I still had Kate.


	22. Chapter 22

When I woke in the morning, my head was already throbbing before I even opened my eyes. Through my eyelids, I could see bright sunlight pouring through the blinds, and it made my head ache more. I groaned loudly and rolled over, only to realize that I was alone in bed. Judging by how brightly the sun was shining, it was probably closer to midday than morning, too.

It took a moment to pry my eyes open and try to recall the series of events that might have led to me being in bed alone just days before Christmas, with a throbbing headache to boot. Then it all came crashing back down on me—the Christmas party, Isaac being an ass about my eating habits, drinking too much just to spite him and then, to top it all off, being sick in his bathroom.

Suffice it to say, it hadn’t been my best night.

None of that accounted for Kate’s absence, but the smell of fresh baked gingerbread that wafted into the bedroom did. Leave it to Kate to still be perfect, put together and ready for the holidays when I was falling apart piece by piece, day by day.

At one point, it felt like I was just cracking a little bit, just a few bits of me falling away while I was mostly able to hold it together. But over time, the pieces became larger and the cracks became gaping chasms that I couldn’t conquer. Soon, there wouldn’t be any of my left—literally or figuratively. I could try my best to cling to the pieces that remained, but I didn’t know who or what they were anymore. There was nothing familiar left of me, all the best parts having fallen away long ago, leaving nothing but a shell.

“Are you finally awake?” Kate asked, appearing in the doorway with a plateful of cookies.

“No,” I replied, but gave her a weak smile. It hurt.

“I bet you don’t have an appetite for these, either,” she replied, stepping into the room and sitting on the edge of the bed. “Gingerbread may not be part of a balanced diet, but it sounds like a pretty good hangover cure to me.”

I eyed the cookies warily. My stomach felt hollow and empty, but I didn’t think that was a good sign. The thought of those cookies sitting in my empty stomach like a rock… I didn’t like it at all.

“They’re vegan,” Kate said. “I haven’t tried them yet, so don’t tell me if they’re horrible.”

“I’m sure they’re great,” I said softly, and I knew I had lost the battle then.

I picked up a small cookie in the shape of a star. It seemed to the be tiniest design she had used. I bit off a small chunk and forced myself to chew and swallow. Even something like cookies seemed no different than medicine these days; it took all my strength to force myself to eat, even when I knew I really was hungry. It made no difference.

Kate gave me a small but genuine smile, and it made me feel horrible. It actually made my wife happy to see me take the tiniest possible bite of food. How had this become my life? The joy had I felt seeing my body change, seeing my ability to better myself… I didn’t remember that feeling at all. That sense of fulfillment was completely eclipsed by the panic, the dread and the shame that I felt whenever I had to eat.

I hated it. But it wasn’t a choice anymore. It wasn’t something I could turn on or off at will.

The one choice I could make, no matter how much it hurt, was to force the rest of that cookie down. If it made Kate smile, I would do anything. I would eat the whole plate of cookies if I thought it was what she wanted. The thought made my stomach turn, but I knew it was the truth. Kate didn’t need to share, even the littlest bit, in these awful feelings of mine. She already knew too much. I didn’t want to show her more and cause her even more pain.

“I should have brought you a drink, too,” she said, her smile fading a bit. “I think we have some ginger ale. Do you want a glass?”

“That would be great,” I replied.

“Just stay right here and I’ll get it for you.”

A part of me hated making her wait on me, but it was only one small thing on the list of things I felt guilty for. It seemed that this entire marriage was based on Kate taking care of me while I regressed further and further. If I thought it was really the life she wanted, maybe it wouldn’t have made me hate myself so much, but I knew it wasn’t. In spite of her natural motherly instincts, I knew Kate was too much her own woman to be happy being nothing more than my maid servant.

Yet the worse I felt, the more I drowned in my guilt, the less I could make a change. It seemed to be almost a physical thing then, a tangible presence, holding me down to the mattress. I didn’t know if I would ever leave my bed again.

“Look, I’ll have him call you later, but I think he needs to get some rest after last night.”

Kate was trying to talk quietly, but she wasn’t very good at it. For someone so often considered shy and quiet, she really had no volume control. I was sure that, whoever she was talking to, I wasn’t meant to hear either end of the conversation, even though I was clearly the topic of it.

“No, I know,” Kate said. After a pause she added, “I know. I do, I do. But he’s got a serious hangover, and I think you all need some time to cool down after everything. Just let it blow over so no one gets killed at Christmas dinner, and then you can get back to business as usual after that. Okay?”

That shed a little light upon whom she might be talking to, although I doubted Isaac would have called so soon after our argument. If there was one thing Isaac was, it was a brooder. He would need longer than overnight to stew in this and make himself angrier before he finally reached his boiling point and managed to get over it.

“Yeah, I’ll tell him. I will. Tell Nat I’ll call her later, too. Bye.”

It was Taylor. That made more sense. As the door creaked open, I rolled over and closed my eyes, hoping to convince Kate that I hadn’t overheard that conversation. Even though they hadn’t said anything horrible, I was still certain it wasn’t meant for my ears.

“Zac?” Kate asked softly as she stepped into the room. “I’ve got your ginger ale, and I brought some crackers, too.”

Deciding it would be rude to ignore her, I rolled over and feigned sleepiness—which wasn’t difficult, given that I felt like I could easily go back to sleep and not wake up for weeks. I gave her a weak smile, which she returned with only slightly more enthusiasm.

“Back in the land of the living for now, huh?” She asked, carefully setting the glass and sleeve of Saltines on the bedside table before sitting down next to me. “Your brother called.”

“Which brother?” I asked, as though I didn’t already know the answer.

“Taylor. He was hoping you two could get together in the studio soon, maybe today if you weren’t busy. I told him you weren’t up for it, though. I hope that’s okay.”

I nodded. “It’s okay. I don’t really want to see anyone today. I mean, aside from you and Shepherd.”

“You can’t avoid them forever, honey,” Kate said, brushing her fingers through my hair, which had fallen down to cover one of my eyes.

“I can try really, really hard, though,” I replied.

“Like it or not, they’re still your brothers, and worse yet—your coworkers. You have to find some way to get along. Last night was bad, but it’s honestly not the end of the world. You guys haven’t been home from tour for that long. There’s probably still a lot of pressure built up, huh?”

“I guess that’s what it is,” I replied, but I wasn’t so sure. We had been home for nearly a month, and although we had squeezed in some work time around all the family time that came with the holidays, I didn’t feel all that overloaded with my brothers lately. But perhaps everything coming to a head, their frustration with me finally reaching its peak.

“Get some rest and everything will seem better, I promise,” Kate said.

“I love you so much, Katie, but you know that isn’t true.”

She nodded. “I know. It _will_ help with the hangover, though, and whatever else has gotten you so run down lately. The rest of it… whatever it is… it can wait until tomorrow. And so can your brothers. If they get mad, you can blame me for it. I’ll let them know you’re grounded.”

I chuckled softly. “Okay, Mom.”

Kate scrunched up her nose and made a face, but ultimately laughed as well. I was glad that I could still make her laugh and smile, however fleeting those moments were. If I could barely even cheer myself up, I feared I would loose my ability to make anyone else happy. I had always relied on that; if I could make people laugh, they wouldn’t notice that I wasn’t laughing with them. If I lost that skill, I didn’t know what I would do.

“Just get some rest,” Kate said and kissed the top of my head. “Do you want me to wake up you for dinner?”

“Just save me a plate, I guess,” I replied. “If I’m not up to eating it tonight, it’ll keep for tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Kate replied. With one more kiss to my forehead, she stood and left the room, shutting the door softly behind her.

I gulped down a few sips of the ginger ale, just to be able to say that I had, and rolled back over. Even though I had slept half the day away, I already felt on the verge of nodding off again. I cocooned myself in our blankets, trying to find some little scrap of warmth to stop my shivering.

How had I become so pathetic? Rockstars were supposed to party all night and sleep all day, but I was such a pathetic, twisted parody of that that it was almost laughable. It was past the point of laughable, actually, and straight into pathetic. If it was possible to pity yourself, then that was exactly what I felt.

In only a matter of minutes, I drifted off to sleep, but it was fitful, full of dreams that passed by in strange, incomprehensible flashes. I felt feverish. Still, the dreams were preferably to being awake, suspended in this state of shame and self hatred. Perhaps that was why I found myself so tired lately; sleeping was my only escape.


	23. Chapter 23

After several days of communicating solely through our wives, my brothers and I resolved that it would be in everyone’s best interests to take a nice, long break from work and each other until the holidays were over. I elected to spend most of that time sleeping and playing video games. The video games part was a choice, but the sleeping thing really wasn’t; I still found myself with barely enough energy to lift my arms and hold the xBox controller.

The break, which I had no doubt we all did need, had an interesting side effect. It left me absolutely terrified of Christmas. Now, in addition to my fear of having to deal with all the high calorie food and all the family members wanting to shove it down my throat, I had to deal with seeing Taylor and Isaac after a week of radio silence. True, it wasn’t that long of a break, but it was longer than any I could remember the three of us taking since any of our honeymoons. I didn’t know what to do with myself without them, but I didn’t know what to do with them, either.

Christmas Eve was the traditional big day in our family, although the family dinner was pushed earlier and earlier into the day to allow for those of us with families of our own to have plenty of time at home. Inevitably, though, we ended up back at my parents’ house the next afternoon for leftovers, in spite of the fact that we all went home with generous containers full of food.

It all centered around food, didn’t it? That realization occurred to me as I stared down at the plate I had barely touched. Holidays were supposed to be about family and love, but in practice they were about money and food. And if you didn’t eat what was offered, it was a worse offense than buying the wrong gift. As much as it pained me to do so, I knew that I had to at least force down a few bites of ham, maybe a small roll and perhaps a few gulps of eggnog.

None of it went down easily, but I was lost amongst the crowd. Even Isaac didn’t seem to be paying such close attention to me as he had been. Maybe our argument really had blown over and all it had needed to do so was time and space. I was just thankful to blend in and not attract any special attention; I didn’t really care the reason why.

After the main courses had been eaten—or in my case, picked at—the party broke up. Everyone dispersed around the house, some staying for dessert while others wandered off with drinks in hand. I wanted that to be my opportunity to slip away entirely, but I knew it wasn’t. I couldn’t leave without Kate and Shepherd, and I had no place to go even if I did. I had no place at the party either. I couldn’t fake interest in any of the various subjects being discussed in this group or that, and I didn’t have the enthusiasm or energy to play with any of the children.

Who was I kidding? I didn’t have the enthusiasm or energy for anything at all.

After wandering around aimlessly for a few minutes and trying my best to stay out of everyone’s way, I found myself back in the kitchen, still clutching a mostly full glass of my dad’s eggnog. It was strong, like it always was, but I had no desire to get drunk, not after what had happened the last time. Besides, the drink was thick and heavy in my throat, giving off the illusion that I was drinking a thousand calories worth of the stuff. I knew that was an exaggeration, but I also knew it wasn’t low calorie by any means.

“There you are,” Avery said, appearing in the doorway. She plucked a cookie from a plate on the counter and took a bite before speaking again. “Kate was looking for you. I think she’s almost ready to leave; the baby’s already asleep.”

“I’ll go find her soon. I’m just about ready to leave, too.”

“Did you have any of these cookies? They’re really good, especially the chocolate chip. You should take some with you.”

I shook my head.

Avery eyed me closely. “Did you eat anything at all?”

“I’m really not in the mood for a Christmas interrogation, Ave.” I sat my glass down on the counter with a resounding thud. If I hadn’t been ready to go before this, I certainly was now.

“Yeah, well, I was kinda hoping Christmas would be the one time you could put aside this… whatever this is… and just try to be happy. Or at least fake it for everyone else’s sake.”

“You think I can just turn it on and off like that? Like there’s just some switch I can flick?” The words tumbled out of my mouth trailed by a hiccupy gasp. Was I going to cry? I really hoped I wasn’t going to cry.

Avery looked down and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not like that. But take it from someone who does a lot of pretending—sometimes it’s necessary. It isn’t fun, but it’s necessary. I know my situation is different, but we all have our things, you know? Our secrets, our pain, our whatever. The stuff that drags us down. What it is may be different, but the way we deal with it is pretty similar. Especially you and me—or I guess that would be the way we _don’t_ deal with it.”

I stifled a laugh at that. “I think ‘don’t deal with it’ is definitely an accurate characterization.”

“Yeah, well, maybe we need to start,” Avery replied. “Or at least put on a better face. Maybe if you fake it enough, it gets easier. If it does, let me know, okay?”

“Will do,” I replied. “If you do the same for me, Avie Baby.”

She winced. “You’re never going to stop calling me that, are you?”

“I hadn’t planned on it,” I replied, managing what felt like my first genuine smile of the entire evening.

Avery opened her mouth to speak again, but closed it when the sound of footsteps came near. Even though we hadn’t said anything all that incriminating, this was still a conversation just for the two of us. There were two people in the world who really understood me, I was realizing. One of them was my little sister, who somehow managed to be the most like me of all my siblings, genetics just somehow aligning to create two similar people five years apart. The other was Kate, even though on the surface we seemed so different.

It wasn’t all that surprising, I supposed, that it was Kate coming around the corner. The two people who knew me best knew exactly where to find me—the kitchen. Even when I couldn’t eat, that was the room my life revolved around, perhaps even more so than the studio.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Kate said. “I didn’t interrupt anything important, did I?”

Avery and I both shook our heads, almost perfectly in sync, which I was sure wasn’t convincing at all. But Kate wasn’t really looking for an honest answer, because she knew the truth whether we said it or not. At times it was kind of freaky the way she could read my mind, but I knew that power only extended so far or she would have run away from me in fear years ago.

But she hadn’t. She had, so far, stood by my side through everything I had gone through and everything I had put her through. And all I had done to thank her… was to put her through even more.

“Had enough of the holiday spirit?” Kate asked. She tapped my glass and added, “Or should I say, holiday spirits?”

“No, I think I learned my lesson on that front,” I replied. I noticed the confused look on Avery’s face and was somewhat relieved; that meant the story hadn’t spread outside of the crowd in attendance at the party. “But yeah, I think I’m ready to head home. I foresee a long night of assembling Christmas presents from Santa in my future.”

Kate chuckled softly. “You know I’ll help.”

“I know,” I replied. “You always do.”

More than she knew, in fact. But it didn’t seem the time and place to get into that when I was in an uncharacteristically good mood.

I turned back to Avery and gave her another smile. “I’ll see you soon, okay? Keep in touch.”

“I will,” she said. Directing her attention to Kate, she said, “And you take care of my big brother. He’s… he’s something else, you know.”

“I know,” Kate replied, her tone a bit more solemn than was perhaps called for. Linking her arm in mine, she said, “And I think it’s far past time for me to get him and his son home. Bye, Avery.”

Avery gave me a quick but tight hug, and I felt like she might break all of my bones. I think she felt it, too, because her eyes were wide when she let go of me. Neither of us said another word as Kate and I turned and walked out of the room.

The living room was still full of various family members, and I hung back behind Kate as she gathered up our things and retrieved Shepherd from my mom, who was keeping an eye on him as he napped off his pureed version of Christmas dinner. It was easier to let Kate speak for me as she made our goodbyes to all of the family who remained, but even I could feel the tension in the air when it came time to say goodbye to Nikki and Isaac.

While Kate and Nikki cooed over Shepherd’s sleeping figure, Isaac and I stared awkwardly at each other. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to him, because in spite of our conflicts, he was still my big brother. It was just that I didn’t know what to say. An apology was probably in order, but the words stuck in my throat.

“Hey,” Isaac finally said, rubbing his chin. “We’ll, uh, we’ll probably get together after New Years, I think. If you’re up for it.”

“Yeah,” I choked out. “I think that… that sounds good.”

Isaac nodded, and we fell back into another awkward silence.

“Sorry, about uh… well,” I mumbled, staring intently at my shoes.

“Yeah,” Isaac replied. “Just… take care of yourself.”

I nodded, but didn’t meet Isaac’s eyes. There was something like pity in his voice, and I decided that was even worse than his condemnation. Isaac was the sort of person who held everyone close to him to high standards. He judged himself most harshly, but as members of the band, the three of us were practically one person, a strange three headed unit. Add onto that the fact that we were, after all, his younger brothers, and Isaac developed a strange way of showing his affection by judging every little thing we did. When he stopped judging, stopped pushing you to do better, and started pitying… that was when you knew he was losing hope.

He wasn’t the only one.


	24. Chapter 24

The drive back to our house was long but quiet, Kate and I both in fear of waking Shepherd. We worked perfectly in tandem to carry him, the containers full of leftover food and still-wrapped presents from the rest of the family inside. Even though there was still so much that I didn’t share with Kate, and probably some that she didn’t share with me, we made a good team. We didn’t even need to speak to understand each other. In spite of everything else in my life, I still felt grateful to have something like that, to have someone like her. I didn’t deserve her, but I didn’t dare voice that opinion. If I said it, maybe she would realize it was true. So I kept it to myself and just enjoyed the way we worked together so wonderfully.

While Kate went to work putting Shepherd to bed again in his actual bed and putting away all of the food, I hauled out the presents we planned to surprise him with in the morning. Of course we knew that, at his age, he wouldn’t really understand or remember any of it, but it was the sort of thing that just seemed necessary to do. Maybe Kate was right that we worked a little too hard to achieve the image of perfection, to reach this ideal perfect life that wasn’t really possible.

Yet we still tried, like Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, over and over, even though deep inside we knew we would never win. We couldn’t stop.

I was staring at all of the boxes, trying to decide where to begin, when Kate walked back into the room sporting a pair of red silk pajamas. I hadn’t even managed to take my shoes off yet.

“You think you can handle all of this on your own?” She asked.

“Not really.” I shrugged. “But you go on and get some sleep. I’ll manage.”

Kate gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Okay, if you insist. Don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”

“I won’t,” I replied. I had a feeling she wasn’t just talking about assembling all of Shepherd’s presents.

She padded out of the room, leaving me alone with all the boxes. There were playpens, swings, walkers and all manner of other toys that I knew Kate had spent months researching, trying to find just the right items for Shepherd’s age and developmental stage. What had I done? Nod and agree with her choices. Putting all of it together was really the least I could do to prove that I wasn’t completely useless as a husband and father.

I started with the smaller, simpler looking items, which I soon realized was a mistake. As the night worn on and my patience grew thin, it became harder and harder to make sense of all of the directions. I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore or who I was trying to fool. Everyone knew I was an incompetent mess. Who thought I could really be a good father? I hadn’t even been able to help Kate pick out all of these presents. I was so disconnected from everything, lost in this fog that made it impossible for me to do even the most basic things anymore.

The realization that I was even disconnected from my own son only made me feel more like shit. I loved Shepherd, of course; there was no question about that. But who was he? What did I really know about this little person I had helped create? I racked my brain and couldn’t think of a single thing other than the basics—age, hair color, eye color. Shepherd was a mystery to me, his existence so separate from mine through no one’s fault but my own.

I sat down the screwdriver I had been using to assemble a needlessly complicated new swing and stared at the room around me. I barely even recognized it. Boxes and toys and Christmas decorations aside, nothing about it looked familiar. Was this my life? Was this my home? Logically, I knew it was, but suddenly it all seemed foreign. It was like wearing a costume; I knew I was still me, but nothing around me seemed right somehow. Everything was just a little bit off, like playing pretend. Except it wasn’t a costume I could just take off and return to my normal life. This _was_ my normal life.

I didn’t even realize I was crying until one of the tears landed on my lip and my tongue darted out instinctively to taste the saltiness. My hand crept up to feel my cheeks and confirm that tears were indeed falling. It was yet another symptom of this strange, out of body experience. Nothing about what I was doing, who I was or the point of it all made sense to me. And I didn’t even understand why that was so upsetting. 

“Zac?” Kate asked softly, arms crossed over her chest in the doorway. I hadn’t even heard her walk up.

“Yeah?” I asked, not able to hide my sniffles at all. I shook my head and let my hair fall across my cheeks, hopefully drying some of the tears as it did so.

Kate didn’t seem to buy it. “I just wanted to see how things were going.”

“Fine,” I replied, knowing she had already seen right through me. But I still couldn’t turn off the lies.

She padded into the room and sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of me. “Okay. Tell me what I can do. Can I put something together for you? Heat up some leftovers? What can I do?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, Katie. I don’t know.”

“Okay,” she replied, nodding. “So this isn’t just about one of these contraptions not cooperating.”

“Not really,” I replied. “I mean, maybe it started that way. I don’t know. I don’t know when or how it started. I think that’s what I was trying to figure out, exactly. When all of this started to feel like some weird sort of performance art. When I forgot how to… I don’t know, just be a human being. And not just any human being, but one I recognize. One I know. Me.”

Kate stared at me for a moment, as though my voice had been on a delay and she were waiting for all the words to stop coming before she could finish processing them. When they did finally seem to wash over her, I could see the change, a certain sadness coming into her eyes and a few tears pooling in the corners.

“I don’t know how to help with that,” she answered meekly but honestly. “I don’t want to ask if it’s something I did or something I didn’t do, but…”

I shook my head and reached for her hand, with was twitching nervously as she spoke. “No, no—Katie, no. It’s not… none of this is about you. But I guess I did start thinking about, you know, what you were saying in the hospital about that desire to have the perfect, fantasy life. And how you can get so caught up in that… that you lose yourself. And that’s where I am. Lost. But the only thing…. The only thing out of all of it that really makes sense, whether it’s that perfect fantasy life or not, is being with you. I mean that, I really do.”

Kate let out a hiccupy laugh. “God, I feel horrible for making you say it. I don’t know when I started needing that reassurance, you know? That you really do want to be with me, that this really is working. You would think that being married would be enough. It’s pretty permanent, anyway. But it’s… it’s harder, isn’t it? Harder than just dating, I mean. Of course it is, but it’s just… realizing it, in action, how much harder it is. Maybe that’s what changed you, what changed us. What changed everything.”

“Maybe it is,” I replied, although I wasn’t sure.

The last few years, with everything about my identity changing… yes, it would make sense that that would trigger some sort of crisis. But these feelings weren’t really new to me. I remembered with startling clarity the teenage years I spent in a fog, barely connected to anything or anyone, my only anchors the music and Kate. The way I had felt then was different, because I was different, but there was still a certain similarity to the black hole I was staring down now.

I sighed heavily. “Does it even matter why it changed, though? I keep thinking if I can pinpoint when everything went to shit, when I became… whatever it is I am…. Then I can figure out how to fix it. But maybe not. I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything.”

“Treating the symptoms when you don’t know the root cause, the diagnosis, usually doesn’t work,” Kate remarked. “But if it’s all you can do, it’s all you can do. Maybe as you clear those up, the answers will become clearer, too.”

“I hope so,” I replied, leaning my forehead against hers. “I really, really hope so. God, I hope you’re right, Katie.”

“Don’t you know?” She asked, her tone surprisingly teasing. “I’m always right.”

I let out a hoarse laugh. “I wouldn’t have married you if you weren’t. God knows this marriage needs _somebody_ to be right.”

Kate laughed, too, and just like that my mood changed. It was a horrible cliché, but maybe laughter really was the best medicine. If only I could laugh all the time. God knows I tried, but these days it seemed harder and harder to finally anything to laugh about.

The fact that it was well past midnight and I was sitting in the floor in a veritable minefield of Babies R Us detritus was pretty laughable, though. I opened my mouth to express that thought, but rather than my own voice, out came the distinctive cry of an infant. It took me a moment to register that I hadn’t made that noise; Shepherd had merely chosen that exact moment to remind us of his existence as loudly as he knew how.

“Stay here,” I said. “I’ll check on him.”

“Are you sure?” Kate asked, looking surprised.

I nodded. Her surprise only persuaded me even more that I needed to do this. I needed to know him, and I needed him to know me. It wouldn’t fix all of my problems, but like Kate said, treating the symptoms just might be better than nothing. It was a small step, but it was a starting place. I could start right then by acting like an actual father and check on my son.

“Okay,” Kate said, nodding as though she understood the thought process I had gone through to make that decision. Knowing her, she probably did. Sometimes I was convinced that if you cut me, Kate would bleed. She glanced around at the mess I had left around us, and said, “You know what? You go on to bed after you see what’s bothering him. I’ll finish all of this.”

I eyed her a little warily, but I could see that she had already made up her mind. If that was what Kate wanted, then that was exactly how things were going to go. In any case, I couldn’t argue when she was ordering me to bed—even if it was just to sleep.

“Sleep in late tomorrow, too,” Kate added. “We’ll be lazy and eat leftovers and open presents whenever we’re ready. Maybe it’s not special or magical, but I think it’s exactly the sort of Christmas we need.”

“It sounds special to me,” I replied honestly. “And not just because it involves sleeping. I think… I think we need to do things our way. Fuck what everybody else thinks is perfect or the way we’re supposed to do things.”

“I don’t know that I would have chosen those exact words, but I agree.” Kate smiled, but it fell quickly as Shepherd gave another loud cry. “But someone really, really needs to go see what’s bothering him.”

I gave Kate a quick kiss on the forehead and stood up, pulling myself up to my full height as thought that would give me more strength. I could do this. I could definitely do this.

The cries reached fever pitch right as I walked into the nursery, and I had to cover my ears as I walked to his crib. It was pretty clear, though, as soon as I lifted him from the crib what his problem was—a dirty diaper. That was absolutely within the realm of my abilities; I had enough younger siblings that I had learned that particular skill early on.

Once Shepherd’s diaper was changed, his demeanor changed, too. If only it were so simple to change my own moods, I thought. Anything that did cheer me up seemed to be so fleeting, though. Even my conversation with Kate weighed heavily on my mind, although it hadn’t been all that bad. It had been the most I had said to anyone about my troubles, and I hated burdening her with them, even though she already seemed to know and understand.

She knew, at least, how much I needed to sleep. It didn’t fix everything, but it did at least give me a short reprieve.

Once Shepherd was settled back into his rib, I climbed into my own bed and curled up under the blankets, hoping sleep came soon. In the morning, perhaps thing would look a little better. I knew that was an oversimplification, but it was all I had. Every night, I hoped for a better morning and it rarely came, but still I hoped. It was all I had left.


	25. Chapter 25

Somehow, my stash of pills managed to last through the holidays, helped by the fact that it was becoming increasingly difficult to sneak away to pop one or two of them. The last few that I had squirreled away in my car got me through to New Years Eve, and that was it. It was just my luck, I supposed, that I would run out before yet another party.

This time, Kate was hosting. In a surprising stroke of luck for me, she realized early in the evening that she’d forgotten the ginger ale for her punch, and since she still had various finger foods to prepare to go with said punch, I was tasked with running out to the corner store to pick up a two liter.

That was how I found myself sitting in the parking lot of a Quik Trip, two packets of my new favorite vice clenched in my fist.

I didn’t even know why I was hesitating. I looked down at the little packets, and they seemed so harmless. Of course I knew that they weren’t, but I wasn’t going to let something like that happen to me again. And it hadn’t, had it? I was being careful. I had things under control and I knew my limits. And I knew that a handful of these pills would be just fine.

With that thought in mind, I ripped into the first package and poured its contents onto my tongue. I had bought a Mountain Dew, too, and I took a swig of that to wash the pills down. The sugar and fizz didn’t mix well with the tablets, but I forced them down anyway. I needed them. It didn’t matter how unpleasant the taste was. I needed this, and I was going to do it.

I stuffed the other packet into my pocket and put the car into drive. The pills would kick in soon enough and give me the boost I needed to get through the party. I just had to wait; if I had to guess, I would be feeling it before I even pulled in the driveway.

I took the long way around our neighborhood, just to give the pills a little extra time to kick in. It was stiflingly hot in my car, so I rolled the windows down and turned the radio up. It was December, but I felt like I was cruising along the California coast in the height of summer. It wasn’t as pleasant of a feeling as I would have hoped, and I wanted to keep on driving and never stop, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to go home.

When I finally pulled into my driveway, it was full of cars. I must have driven around for longer than I had thought. A quick glance at my car’s clock confirmed that, and a check of my cell phone revealed multiple calls and texts from Kate trying to figure out what was taking me so long. I didn’t have an answer for that. I didn’t know how time had gotten away from me. All I knew was that it had. Once again, my perception of not just myself but the world around me seemed to be wrong. What seemed like mere minutes was really over an hour.

Now the party was apparently in full swing without me. That part wasn’t such a surprise. Of course they all decided they could get along just fine without me there to dampen the mood. Of course they didn’t really miss me at all.  
With that thought in mind, I couldn’t get out of my car at all. I turned the engine off, but I didn’t move. I stayed planted in the driver’s seat, staring at the license plate on Taylor’s car. Did I even want to go inside? I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I wanted at all. All I knew was that my body wouldn’t move.

I was vaguely aware of the shutters being opened just enough to peek through, and I looked away. The sound of the front door opening and closing hit my ears, but I still didn’t move. Only when Kate ripped open the door to my car did I manage to turn my head.

“What the hell, Zac?” She hissed out. “I’ve been calling nonstop. And now… this. In front of everyone.”

I glanced back and the house and saw that there was indeed a cluster of my friends and family standing by the door, gaping. Of course they would enjoy watching the Zac Hanson Shitshow again. This was shaping up to be a really good episode, too. I almost felt like an observer of it, as well, watching the scene from somewhere outside my body where I couldn’t control my behavior at all.

“Will you please just stop whatever this is and come inside?” Kate asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t think I can.”

Kate gave a soft sigh. “Is this an existential crisis I can help with or something else?”

“Something else, I think,” I replied.

Kate vanished from sight for a moment, and I thought she was giving up on me. Then I heard the passenger door open and realized she was trying a different tactic. I had to admire the woman’s patience. I would have given up on me years ago.

“Okay,” she said. “So it’s something else. Can we narrow it down any more than that? Let’s break this down into little, manageable pieces so we can get through this.”

“Me,” I corrected. “Not we. You’re not… you’re not part of this. You didn’t do this to me.”

“I’m your wife. Of course I’m part of this.”

I shook my head. “But you shouldn’t be. This is… it’s too much, Katie. I don’t want this for me, so I damn sure don’t want it for you.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before you married me,” she replied, but it was without venom. It was merely a statement of fact, and I couldn’t really dispute it. She reached for my hand, but pulled back quickly, wiping her own hand on the car seat. “God, Zac. You’re practically dripping sweat and it’s the middle of winter.”

As if to prove her point, she put a hand up to my forehead. I cringed, but it wasn’t like I had room to get away from her. I did feel hot. I supposed it was the pills. I probably should have been concerned about that, but I had bigger problems than another possible overdose.

“You need to get inside and lay down if you’re sick,” Kate said. She reached for my hand again but I yanked it away, and instead her hand landed in the cup holder. She pulled it up, something plastic caught between her fingers. “What’s this?”

For a brief moment, I thought my heart had actually stopped, and I wasn’t sure if that was because of the pills or because the pills were no longer a secret.

“Zac, these are…” Kate gasped out, eyeing the ripped packaging closely. What remained of it was obviously still enough for her to puzzle out what it had once contained. She wasn’t dumb, after all. “They’re… diet pills? You’ve been taking these?”

I nodded, because what else could I do? I had stupidly left the proof right there for her to find.

“For how long?”

“I don’t think you want to know,” I replied, but even as I said it, I knew it was the wrong answer.

“For how long?” Kate repeated.

I hung my head. “October, I think. After my birthday.”

The car filled with a horrible silence. I couldn’t remember another silence so oppressive, so thick in the air that I felt like I could almost see it, taste it, grasp it in my hand and throw it out the window. If only it were that easy to rid myself of my problems.

Finally, Kate let out a breath. “When you were in the hospital.”

It wasn’t a question. I nodded.

“What else have you lied about?” She asked, then shook her head. “Nevermind. I don’t want to know. Here I am killing myself to stay in shape, lose the baby weight, while it seemed so easy for you. I was dying to know your secret. Some fucking secret.”

“I didn’t…” I trailed off, because I wasn’t sure where I was going with that sentence. There was nothing to deny, other than the fact that I hadn’t lied to her about anything else. But why would she believe that? It wasn’t even worth fighting about. Nothing was.

“I feel so stupid for not seeing it. For not seeing that something was wrong. But maybe I’m just as bad, you know, with the exercise and fad diets and everything.”

I shook my head. “You’re not. You’re not like me at all. You’re so much better than me, and all… all I wanted to was to be that good. That perfect.”

“This isn’t perfection, Zac. I mean—I’m not perfect, and whatever you’re doing… whatever you’ve done… it’s not good. Not good at all. And I want to be the good wife right now—maybe for the first time ever—and try to stop this. Try to stop you. But mostly, I’m just really, really angry at myself, that you could do something like this and that I didn’t even see it.”

“I guess that’s understandable,” I replied. There was no fight left in me. I nodded to the backseat. “Your ginger ale is there. Not that I think anyone really cares about the punch anymore. But it’s there and I’m… I’m just gonna go.”

“Go?” Kate asked, and there was a hurt in her eyes that I hadn’t expected.

“I think I’ve caused enough of a scene tonight,” I said.

“So you’re going to leave,” she said, her voice turning cold. “Because that won’t cause even more of a scene; one of the hosts of the party being absent.”

“We ought to know by now that I ruin every party. Someday you’re all just going to stop inviting me at all.”

“If you’re going, then go.” Kate reached into the backseat for the plastic bag that contained the catalyst for my newest breakdown. “But just… don’t stay gone. And I mean that in distance and in spirit. You’ve been so, so far away for so long. I just want _you_ back. That’s all.”

Kate turned away from me then, but not too quickly to keep from me seeing the tears pooling in her eyes. Mine were dry. A part of me wished I could cry. I knew that I would felt more normal if I could.

But I didn’t.

In silence, eyes dry, I watched Kate climb out of my truck and walk back to the house. I turned my head as she ushered all the nosy observers back inside, and I tried not to think about how she would be forced to explain what I had done. But I couldn’t undo it. Staying would only make it worse, and so I turned my car back on and drove away.

I wasn’t sure where I was going at first, but my body instinctively drove toward our downtown studio. The couch inside wasn’t terribly uncomfortable, and it wouldn’t be the first time a Hanson man had spent the night there. I hoped it was only one night. A part of me wanted to wait until I had found myself again to come home, but I knew that meant I might be on the run forever.

I was really tired of running.

I was just _tired_.


	26. Chapter 26

New Year’s came and went and I didn’t even notice.

Out of spite, I supposed, I gulped down the other packet of pills after parking behind our studio. It wasn’t long before I found myself facing down the office toilet, the pills and the meager meal I’d had for lunch making their presence known again. Afterward, I curled up on the office couch, and when I woke again, it was already 2009.

I had never been much for the whole holiday; reflections on the past year and resolutions for the new just weren’t my thing. Time passed however time wanted to pass, and whatever would happen was largely out of my control. Knowing that didn’t really give me any sense of peace, though. But neither did making promises to myself that I knew I wouldn’t keep.

Even this attempt at running away was a promise I couldn’t keep. Kate and I both knew it wasn’t going to last, and I hadn’t even gone that far. I wasn’t impossible to find, if anyone had been searching for me. Of course, I knew that they wouldn’t. They would give me as long as I needed to blow off my steam, but the truth was that I didn’t have any steam to blow off. I didn’t have _anything_ left.

For a few hours, I puttered around the office, tinkering with a few songs that were in the running for our next album, but I didn’t really accomplish anything. It was nice, but a little eerie, to be in the office alone. At some point, though, the quiet became stifling. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to stop pouting and go home.

The drive home felt longer than it ever had before, but finally I arrived, finding things much at all quieter than they had been the night before. This time, the driveway was completely empty, and even Kate’s car was missing from the garage. In vain, I searched the kitchen for a note that might tell me where she had gone, but I came up empty. I could only hope that she needed a small break, too. Everything seemed suspended in motion, a few dirty dishes from the party I had ruined still lying in the sink and a bag of trash sitting by the garage door waiting for someone to take it outside. There was no sense of finality to it at all, and that gave me hope that Kate had just stepped out temporarily.

I walked quietly and carefully through the house, like I was a guest or a resident coming home after a longer time away than just one night. Like I was trying to document all the ways the house might have changed in my absence. Of course, it hadn’t changed at all. Maybe I had, but not in just one night.

Eventually I made my way into the bathroom, where I decided to take a much needed shower. As always, I turned the water up as hot as I could stand, until it felt like a million needles boring into my skin. At least while I was under the spray, I could convince myself that it was washing away all of my problems, all of my sins, and leaving nothing but the person I wished I was underneath it all.

When I finally emerged from the shower, I realized I had forgotten to grab a towel from the linen closet that was inexplicably, and annoyingly, just outside the bathroom door. I was home alone, though, so what did it matter if I walked around naked for just a moment?

My reflection in the mirror stopped me before I even made it out of the bathroom. Who was this guy? I could practically count all of my ribs, and the dark shadows under my eyes seemed to go on for days. Was this what I had become? All of my effort to lose weight, all of the work I put in… to become this walking skeleton.

Against my better judgment, I stepped onto the scales Kate kept next to the sink. One hundred and twenty seven pounds. After weeks of back and forth, finally a number that was officially underweight. I should have been proud of that accomplishment. Months ago, I would have been. But right then, I just felt empty and hollow. I couldn’t dredge up a single emotion, good or bad.

“What are you doing?” Kate asked, her reflection suddenly appearing in the mirror next to me. I hadn’t even heard her walk in or her car in the driveway.

“I’m just…. Nothing.” I sighed. “I didn’t know you’d be back any time soon.”

“I didn’t know _you_ would be,” Kate replied, but that was a lie. Of course she knew I wouldn’t stay gone for long. Where could I go?

Kate stepped forward and glanced at the scale. Her breath hitched in her throat, and I knew she was trying not to gasp at the number.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I asked, doubting she would answer honestly.

“It’s bad,” she replied, proving me wrong. She ran her fingers up my side, trailing across my ribs. “It’s… it’s really bad. God, I don’t know how I didn’t see it.”

“I was gone for a few months.” I shrugged. “And who would have thought… I mean, it’s me. You know how I am about food.”

Kate shook her head. “I thought I did. Now I don’t know anything anymore. How did we get here, Zac?”

“I think I’ve been on this trajectory for a long, long time,” I admitted. “I’ve never been… just never as happy as everybody else. As happy as I acted.”

“And you think I have been?” Kate asked, but her tone was soft, not accusing. “Some of us just aren’t happy creatures, Zac. I don’t know. Some people, maybe it’s because they’ve seen too much, been through too much, know too much. Some of it’s just our nature. Why do you think the two of us work so well together? It isn’t because I’m so damn cheerful and we balance each other out like that.”

“But you do balance me out,” I replied. “You’re kinda the only thing that does. And I hate that, actually. I can’t do this to you. I can’t put all of this on you.”

“I said yes,” Kate replied. “I said yes, and I knew what you were like then. I knew what we were like together. I signed up for this. I don’t… I don’t know what to think about last night, but I’m not done. I’m not giving up.”

I leaned back against her and sighed. She wrapped her arms around my waist, and I swore it looked like they could wrap around my twice even as thin as they were.

“Why don’t you get dressed?” Kate asked. “I’ll microwave some of the nacho dip from last night. I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”

I scrunched up my nose in disgust, but the truth was that Kate’s nacho dip was some of my favorite stuff, even if it was absolutely the least healthy recipe she ever made.

“I know, baby,” she said softly. “But when was the last time you ate?”

“Lunch yesterday,” I replied honestly. “The grilled cheese you made.”

I could see the horror and surprise in Kate’s eyes, but her voice didn’t betray it. “Let me get you a towel. It’ll just take a minute or two to heat up. And I don’t know about you, but I could eat the whole tray of it by myself.”

“I’ll try.”

It was the best I could offer her, and it seemed to be enough. She gave my waist a squeeze before walking away. A moment later, a fluffy, oversized towel flew into the room and smacked me in the head. To my surprise, I laughed. And it was a real laugh. It hurt, somewhere deep inside that I didn’t know and couldn’t explain, but strangely, it was a good sort of hurt.

As if on cue, my stomach growled and it only made me laugh more.

The moment to be melancholy and self pitying ruined, I decided to do exactly what Kate had said. Without another look in the mirror, I dried myself off and walked into our bedroom to find something vaguely clean to wear. I settled on sweatpants and an old shirt from one of our past tours, because I knew I didn’t have anybody to impress, and then I followed the smell of warm nacho dip to the kitchen.

I found Kate sitting at the island, the dip and a bag of tortilla chips in front of her. A can of Diet Mountain Dew was sitting across from her, and I knew it was meant for me. Wordlessly, I popped it open and took a sip.

I didn’t want the dip. At least, I didn’t think that I did. But the more I stared at it, the less I could resist. I knew, but now I saw with real clarity, that I needed to fight this voice that shamed me for every bite that I put in my mouth. And if Kate could sit there and dip her chips directly into the pan, then why couldn’t I?

She nudged the bag of chips toward me and I nodded. I plopped down on the bar stool like a ton of bricks and dug in. It was scary, and I didn’t know how much I would hate myself for it later, but I knew it was important that I do it right then. I knew I needed to eat, and after just one bite, I knew that I _wanted_ to as well. The feeling would probably pass, but for right then, I was going to take advantage of it and gorge myself.  
We ate in silence for a few minutes before Kate finally asked, “So what now?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, heaving a sigh. “It’s like I keep saying, I can’t just… I can’t turn this on and off. Because it’s a part of me, you know? Maybe it only got this bad this year, but it’s a part of me. And I think it always has been.”

Kate nodded. “Of course it has been. Aren’t creative people always a little dark? The really good creative people, I mean.”

“So maybe getting back into the studio will help, but how much? It’s not going to fix everything. And maybe nothing can fix _everything_ , because like I said, some of it’s just me. It’s just how I’m made. I don’t want to not be me, I just don’t want to be… _this_ me.”

“I think, at least to some extent, we do have a choice in who we are.”

I nodded. Maybe we did. Maybe I had just been making all of the wrong choices for months, years even. Maybe it was terrifying to think about changing. Maybe I didn’t even know where to begin. Maybe I just wanted to sit here and eat the rest of this nacho dip and then everything else we had in the house.

For several minutes, we sat there quietly, still eating heaping chips full of the beans and cheese. I didn’t know what else to say. No, that wasn’t right. There were a million thoughts swirling around in my mind, so quickly that I couldn’t pin any of them down and try to begin figuring out what to say. All the thoughts centered on one thing, though—that number on the scale, a number that at least on an intellectual level, I knew was so, so unhealthy.

I wanted to be angry with everyone, myself included, that it had gotten this bad. It was, though, no one’s fault but my own, even if my mind was obviously so warped that I couldn’t see how bad it was until now. Now, for whatever reason, something had snapped and I could see it. I could see that everything I had done, all the steps I had taken to supposedly better myself, had only become twisted and left me this hollow skeleton of a person.

That really only left one thing for me to say.

“Katie,” I said, “I think… I think I need help.”


	27. Chapter 27

The treatment center was in California, but not in the city that I knew so well, the city that I was sure must have stolen my soul years ago. It was farther north, but still along the coast, convenient but still secluded enough that I was surprised it wasn’t more popular with the rich and famous.

I hadn’t wanted to chose somewhere like that, one of the cheesy places that people far richer and far more famous than me went to dry out so they could do it all over again. I wasn’t like that. I just wanted to get better and never set foot in one of these places again.

It took a few weeks of intense research for Kate to find just the right place for me. She knew me better than I knew myself, and as soon as she showed me a picture of the campus, I knew it was right. It was where I needed to be.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what Kate had said, and I decided that she was right. Some people really just weren’t meant to be happy, at least not in a carefree, oblivious sort of way. It wasn’t about intelligence, really, but it was about knowledge. The things I’d seen, from such a young age, showed me that there was so much to the world outside of myself, my family and the little bubble we existed in. And there was so much more bad than good. There were so many reasons to be depressed and give up hope.

But I was just _tired_.

I was tired of having all of the pain in the world weighing down on me all the time. I couldn’t change the world, though. But I could change myself, at least to a certain extent. It was like that proverb, I supposed, and I was learning what to accept and what to just let go.

I was tired of the lies, too. I was tired of hiding what I was and how I felt. I was tired of pretending that nothing was wrong, even when it was becoming more and more obvious to everyone around me that it was all smoke and mirrors. But they were all so willing to believe what they were told, wanting the simple and easy answer, when nothing was really simple or easy. Even when the truth was staring them in the face, gaunt and malnourished, they only saw what I had told them.

Not everyone was supportive or understanding of my decision to get help. It pushed back our album’s recording schedule and interrupted everyone else’s lives. Of course, it interrupted mine in a bigger way, but my life had been on hold for the last year anyway. Mostly, I don’t think any of them were as ready to let go of the lies as I was and admit that things had gotten really, really out of control.

I was just so, so fucking tired--of everything and in every way.

Part of that, I knew, was because of how much weight and muscle mass I had lost. I was so weak, it was a wonder I had made it through the tour at all. Since arriving at the treatment center, I had gained sixteen pounds. The weight came back easily, helped by how delicious the food was. In a place that was so close to being a hospital, that had been a surprise, but I supposed it made sense. With so many patients suffering from eating disorders—a phrase I wasn’t afraid to associate with myself anymore—serving shitty food would probably make it even harder to help them recover.

It had taken me a week after arriving to accept the diagnosis. I knew it was true, of course. I had known it was true from the first time Avery had suggested it, but I didn’t want to admit it. Eating disorders were something that teenage girls and models suffered from. Not me. Not strong, manly men. But who was I kidding? I wasn’t strong at all.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the root cause of it all, and I never came up with a real answer. Most people, I think, would have looked back to the early days of our fame and sought answers there. Had I been abused, mistreated, forced into something I didn’t want? Maybe music hadn’t been my dream at first, the way it had been my brothers’, but it was too much a part of me to imagine giving up now. And in spite of our child star status, we had an almost impossibly idyllic childhood. Even as teenagers, we were no worse than any other teenagers. There was no event, no one moment I could point to and say that that was when everything had changed. There was no tragic, inciting incident, but why did there need to be? 

Maybe this was just who I was. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to be happy like other people. And that was okay. Who needed to be happy and carefree all the time? I liked seeing the world for what it was and understanding both the good and the bad. I needed them both, I was realizing. Without the good and the bad, the light and the dark, I was only seeing half the picture, half the truth.

And I wanted it all.

The truth of me was so much more complicated than just one diagnosis in two words—anorexia nervosa. The words major depressive disorder didn’t explain everything about me, either. But I didn’t need those words to define me. Defining me was my job, and I was so many things that weren’t contained in those words—son, brother, husband, father, drummer, artist, producer, businessman and so much more.

I was just _me_ , and for the first time in years, that didn’t feel like such a bad thing to be.


End file.
